A sophomore at Venice High School, Carmen Perez, had a film featured in the Los Angeles School District film festival. The 4th annual LAUSD Student Film Festival took place on May 24 at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills.

Carmen Perez joined a program offered at school called Young Storytellers. This program is a free program that is a one-on-one mentorship where low-income students learn how to write original stories that are enlivened on stage or film. Young Storytellers surprised Perez by submitting her film without her knowledge. Perez said she didn’t know her films had been submitted until she got a phone call. She was very excited to find out her film was selected to be shown at the LAUSD Festival. Her film was one of the 19 chosen out of over 1000 films submitted to the festival.

Perez wrote, directed and filmed “Text Me.” It’s about a teenage girl who finds a note in her locker saying, “Text Me.” Thinking this note was from a guy, she has ideas on who this stranger might be and eventually find out it’s a girl. The movie is filmed at Venice High School

Since then, Perez had made a second film called “Friends.” The story revolves around a girl who suffers from bullying. This girl then hires an actor to play a police officer to convince everyone at the school she committed suicide.

Both of these films can also be found on Youtube under her username Carmen Carolina.

Perez is starting a video club in the fall semester for students who are interested in making more films to submit to the LAUSD Film Festival. See Ms. Ruth Greene in Room 12 to sign up.