For the past several years, my friend, collaborator, and frequent Simple Tricks commenter Mike Chenoweth has been working with a local charter school called East Hollywood High. EHHS is a pretty exciting idea, a place where artistically inclined kids can take, in addition to a standard high school curriculum, elective courses in film history and practical film production techniques, taught by people who actually work in the film industry. Mike has been instrumental in shaping this elective program, first as a teacher and, more recently, as Director of Film Studies.

A couple weeks ago, he asked me to do him a favor and judge a number of student-made films for the school’s annual Telos competition. On Friday night, it was my honor to attend the awards ceremony for the nominees and winners.

It was quite a do, I have to admit. The ceremony was held in the auditorium of the main Salt Lake library, which, after hours with most of the lights turned out, resembles a spectacular set from a futuristic movie. The city in Logan’s Run, perhaps, or maybe one of Blofeld’s secret bases from a James Bond adventure. The kids in attendance were dressed as if it were prom night, with many of the girls in dresses and the boys wearing suits or jackets and ties with their Chuck Taylors. (A quick aside: teenage girls these days are far more sophisticated and sexy-looking than I remember the girls being when I was in high school. I hate to sound like a dirty old man, especially nowadays when everyone is so sensitive about the whole predator thing, but sometimes you just can’t avoid the obvious. Words like “yowsers” and “hominah hominah” came to my mind several times during the course of the evening.)

The ceremony was modeled after all the familiar TV awards show. Mike made a few introductory comments — think of what the President of the MPAA does on the Oscars show — then he turned the podium over to Chris Miller, a local actor who has appeared in numerous TV commercials, movies, and stage plays, and who is also a teacher at East Hollywood. Chris was an excellent host, personable and quick-witted when things went wrong. (The only drawback was that his wit frequently went right over the heads of his young audience. For instance, after screening a talky film that consisted entirely of two young men conversing over tea, Chris remarked that it was like My Dinner with Andre, only with better-looking people. I think I was the only person in the auditorium who laughed at that one. But at least I laughed heartily.)

Working within the Oscar template, Chris announced the nominees for each category, and their names and a brief clip of their work was projected on a screen. The winners received statuettes, designed by a fellow student, cast in the same resin that’s used to make on-screen props in many film productions, and painted to look like bronze. Other prizes went along with the stautes: gift cards, free software, that sort of thing. The winning films were shown in their entirety, which was possible because none of them were over ten minutes long.

As sophisticated as many of the kids looked, however, they’re still just kids, and their reactions to winning reflected that. Some mumbled shy thanks without even lifting their eyes to the audience; others were puffed full of themselves by their victory. A couple were pretentious, or eccentric, or just plain weird, but I suppose that goes along with being artistic types. Mostly, they were just plain excited to be recognized for their talents.

For example, one of the films I personally voted for, a sensitive little drama called “Glass Canvas,” won in its category; after the ceremony ended, I happened to bump into the boy and girl who received statuettes for making it. When I congratulated them, the girl’s gushing reaction told me that this was probably the most thrilling thing that’s ever happened to her. I got the sense that she was feeling vindicated somehow as she clutched her Telos statuette in a joyful death grip, and I imagined her taking crap in her old high school for being a movie geek before she transferred to East Hollywood. Her reaction made me happy. It’s been years since I really spent any time around teenagers, and it’s sometimes easy to dismiss them as a bunch of sullen, gadget-obsessed, text-messaging, video-game-playing, superficial little slackers. I get especially sour when Mike tells me the occasional story about how his students don’t have the patience to sit through classics like Lawrence of Arabia, or how they think Star Wars is passe and kind of lame. But seeing their enthusiasm, and the very genuine talent displayed by a number of them, was reassuring and refreshing. It reminded me of the good old days, when Mike and I were shooting movies with a VHS camcorder and editing them with two VCRs wired together. The kids today have it much, much better with all the inexpensive editing software and digital technolgy, but ultimately they’re doing the same thing we were: trying to figure out the language of cinema, trying to learn the craft of making the things they love most: movies. I found myself feeling a little wistful, actually, wishing I was their age again. I miss the days when Cheno would call me up and say, “What’re you doing today? Want to run up to Storm Mountain and shoot an action flick?”

All in all, it was a fun night, and I’m glad I was able to participate. I doubt any of them are reading this, but just for the record, I’d like to extend my congratulations to all the winners, and all the nominees, too, of the 2007 East Hollywood High School Telos Awards. Good job, kids — keep ’em rolling.