TBIFF 2021 student film winners announced

Nick Lusardi

ALPENA — For the second year in a row, Nick Lusardi has been on the winning team in the Thunder bay International Film Festival Student Film Competition. But this year, he won both first and second place with his individual submissions, “Mermaids Specifically” and “Kitchen Sink.”

Lusardi’s films take a creative approach to the theme #FreshWaterIs, which was the prompt for each film entry.

“I was sort of experimenting,” said Lusardi, 15. “I really wanted to enter again, and do something a little bit bigger and better than what I did last year. So I was really trying to explore the concept in a creative way. Because I knew there’d be lots of people who thought of ‘FreshWaterIs’ in a very literal way and so I wanted to try to think of it in more of a creative fashion.”

So, for his first-place film, mermaids in the Great Lakes did the trick. His 11-year-old sister Elizabeth starred in it, and Lusardi played the supporting actor.

He said the idea of the Great Lakes being full of mermaids came to him about a month before the film festival when he was out on a walk.

Maverick Reid

“So I just wanted to do something with that, and it ended up working out,” Lusardi said.

As for the second-place “Kitchen Sink,” the content is a little darker.

“The other idea was a little bit more serious, which was ‘Freshwater is dangerous,’ or ‘Freshwater is a hazard,'” the Alpena High sophomore said. “I sort of came up with this idea about someone who had lost their sibling and just tried to build that around the freshwater.”

He said he’s enjoying making films and may consider a career in filmmaking. But for now, it’s just one of his many hobbies.

“I think everybody’s got potential to be creative, or create something awesome,” he said.

Lillian Wood

“My sister Elizabeth did a great job, and it wouldn’t have been able to happen without her,” he said, adding that everyone who entered the film competition did a great job as well. “I hope that people can see the stuff that I make and see that it’s successful and be inspired by it, and want to do more … there’s plenty of creative people in Alpena.”

He’d love to see the artist community in Alpena grow and flourish.

“I would love to work with more people too,” he added.

The team of Maverick

Reid, Lillian Wood and Bryce Moe earned third place for their film, “What is Freshwater to our Community?”

Bryce Moe

The freshman team was honored to earn third place in their first year entering the contest.

“I’m very passionate on saving the environment and trying to keep it clean, so that was my part,” Wood said. “I wanted to make sure people got that message.”

Wood said the contest was a learning experience.

“I think that anyone who has the chance to do it should do it,” she said. “It was a lot of fun.”

She is entering a Martin Luther King Jr. video contest in February, and she plans to do this competition again next year.

Moe has been watching the festival with his grandpa for years, and was excited to participate this year.

“We all live in the same neighborhood and we all work together really well,” said Moe, who plans to enter again next year. He said he realized how valuable our natural resources are.

“There’s a lot of things you don’t realize, and a lot of things you take for granted,” Reid said. “Doing this project I realized that taking a walk and just looking out at Lake Huron is something you can cherish, and not a lot of people can do that.”

An annual event, the competition encourages students to learn and apply their STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) creative skills as they develop their own ocean and Great Lakes films. The competition theme changes each year.

The 2021 competition is hosted by: Northeast Michigan Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative and the Friends of Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The competition is part of the TBIFF, supported by the Michigan Film and Digital Media Office.

Prizes for the top scoring three films were provided by the Friends of Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary: $300 for 1st Place, $200 for 2nd Place, and $100 for 3rd Place.

Other official selection films included:

¯ “Freshwater is Key” by Megan Brown, Alexis Dekett and Izabella Torsch

¯ “Freshwater is Life” by Patrick Smith and McKenna Barson

¯ “Winter, The Meaning of Where We Live” by Kaylynn Justive and Jennifer Miller

¯ “Freshwater is Frozen” by Josiah Handrich, Ryli Torsch and Tyler Cloft

¯ “Freshwater is History” by John Kurowski, Gabe Glawe and Thaddeus Tadian.

The student film selections can be viewed at: https://watch.eventive.org/thunderbay2021. Previous years’ prize winners are archived at: nemiglsi.org. Visit thunderbay.noaa.gov and ThunderBayShipwrecks on Facebook.