The Minnesota 2020 90-Second Newbery Film Festival: Online Screening!
Readers of the blog know that for the past nine years I’ve hosted the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival—an annual video contest I founded in 2011 in which kid filmmakers create short movies that tell the stories of Newbery-winning books in about 90 seconds.
Every year we put on about a dozen screenings at libraries and theaters in cities all over the country. This year we managed to do about half of the live screenings, but we had to cancel the rest because of the pandemic. In particular, I was supposed to do a screening in Minneapolis on April 25, co-hosted by me and Newbery Medal winner Kelly Barnhill. But like all public events lately, we’ve had to rethink that!
Instead, the Minnesota State Library Services arranged it such that did an ONLINE screening of the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival. In the hourlong video above, join me as we watch the best kid-made 90-Second Newbery videos from all over Minnesota: from Apple Valley to Spring Grove, from Victoria to Minnetonka, from St. James to Delano, and more! Plus some of the best movies we’ve received from around the country this year.
Basically, I host the film festival from my basement, with my daughters Lucy and Ingrid helping out for part of it. We even have a cameo from a fake inflatable Kelly Barnhill!
To learn more about the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival, including contest rules and details on how to participate next year, please visit our official website at www.90secondnewbery.com. Hopefully we’ll be able to resume the live screenings next year!