With the Film Your Issue Film Festival rolling through town last week, I wanted to put up a quick post acknowledging some of the festival winners, put up by the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel & Spa during their stay in Los Angeles.

A few films, like High School Drop-Out by Ian Rojas and Petals of Hope by Sarah Morcos, confronted serious issues with a somber tone while serving as a call-to-action. Rojas’ film illuminated a crisis in education in South Carolina, where highschoolers only have a 53% graduation rate; the film came away winner of the Associated Press Award, the MySpace Audience Award, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation/Strong American Schools Scholarship.

High School Drop-Out

Concentrating on the global struggle for women’s rights, Morcos’ Petals of Hope spoke with authority and dignity, urging us to realize that when one woman suffers, we all suffer. Only 17 years old, Morcos captured the United Nations DPI Award and the United Nations/Global Issue Award.

Petals of Hope

The big FYI winner ended up being a wake-up call about New Orleans. Filmmaker Brendan Odums, 22, and 2-Cent, a group of college students, noticed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that tourists were coming to New Orleans to survey and photograph the wreckage. Odums captures this bizarre phenomenon in his film, New Orleans for Sale, asking the deeply unsettling question: If we’re still paying money to view the devastation, should the citizens of New Orleans rebuild the city? Odums’ film won the FYI Jury Award, the PBS P.O.V. Series Award, the NAACP Award, and the AFI SILVERDOCS Award.

New Orleans For Sale

We at the Renaissance Hollywood salute all the winners of this year’s film festival and we look forward to next year’s crop of great young filmmakers, eager to change the world. You can view all the films at FYI’s site, right here.

This is Bruce, signing off.