The 2020 Hoosier Heartland Film Festival was not only a huge success, but also brought one grand prize home to Indiana for the first time.
The grand prize for the High School Film Competition Summer White Lynch Memorial Award was awarded Raymond Mo, an incoming senior at Carmel High School. Mo co-directed the winning submission, “Whipped Cream Cake.”
More than 3,000 short films were submitted from all over the world, but only 128 were selected to run in the 18 programs that streamed on-demand and played in select screenings at the Tibbs Drive-In Theatre July 21-26.
Mo told The Reporter his winning film was co-directed with a Detroit area student, Minju Hong, who Mo met at a five-week intensive summer video production camp at Northwestern University called National High School Institute.
A total of 850 people attended Indy Shorts in person at Tibbs Drive-In Theatre at 10,000 streamed short films during the festival. (Photo provided)
“Whipped Cream Cake” is about one Asian-American’s struggles to balance American culture while maintaining her Asian heritage.
“It is a story about a girl who struggles to balance her social life, her extracurriculars, her school life and also her family life,” Mo said.
The short film takes place on the birthday of the main character’s mother.
“Haejin, the lead character, tries to reinforce her ties with her mother on this very special day,” Mo said. It is a story about how she foregoes school activity and hanging out with her friends to spend some time with her mom, even though her mom is overworked and comes home late. It definitely not the perfect family, but they make what they can of it.”
Mo studied film production during his junior year at Carmel High School and will take a second year of the class during his upcoming senior year. He did point out that the class was very helpful, but that his personal experiences with video production long predate his classroom instruction.
Mo has always had a passion for filmmaking, having started “playing around” with iMovie and special effects on a Mac computer in elementary school.
“As time passed, I realized this is something that I am really interested in,” Mo said. “Videography is something that not only interests me, but so does editing. But making a film is an insightful way to document our lives. While this film is not a documentary, it is a very realistic fiction film. My co-director, Minju Hong, and I really poured out hearts into this film and it reflects how being Asian-American can affect all aspects of your life.”
Mo’s film was part of Indy Shorts, an offshoot of the Heartland Film Festival. You can watch “Whipped Cream Cake” online at this link.
Indy Shorts showcased 128 short films virtually and 41 short films at Tibbs Drive-In Theatre. Indy Shorts says it is pleased that the virtual film festival had over 10,000 streams equaling four months and 11 days of film watching, 850 people come out to the drive-in, and 180 filmmakers virtually join from all over the world for 18 live Q&A sessions.