Christian Film Wins Big Prize
A 7-minute movie about Columbine High School victim Rachel Scott takes home the $50,000 grand prize in the Tribeca Film Festival's Short Film Competition.
By Mark Moring | posted 7/05/2005
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Against all odds, a Christian short film, Rachel's Challenge, recently won the Amazon Theater/Tribeca Film Festival Short Film Competition.
Jon Lindgren's 7-minute film about Rachel Scott, a Christian who was one of the students killed in the 1999 Columbine High School shootings, won via an Internet audience vote. Lindgren was in New York last week at the awards ceremony, where he picked up the $50,000 grand prize courtesy of American Express. Lindgren, who runs ViaMedia, a video production company in Midland, Texas, will use the money to produce an upcoming documentary, Christian Martyrs of Today.
Columbine victim Rachel Scott is the subject of the winning film
Rachel's Challenge was one of five finalists in the Amazon/Tribeca festival, founded by film star Robert De Niro. Visitors to the Amazon screening site voted on each of the finalists, giving each a rating of 1-to-5 stars. Amazon did not release the final results of the voting, but Mark Smathers, the producer/writer/director of Rachel's Challenge, had some insight into the process.
"We were getting mostly either 1-star votes or 5-star votes," he said. "The film polarized people; they either hated it or loved it. Voters had the option of leaving a comment after voting, leaving no doubt as to the feelings behind the votes. 1-star votes mainly came from people who were offended by the spiritual message of the story. 5-star votes came from people who were inspired by the spiritual message of the story. Every time we got a 5-star vote, someone would give us a 1-star vote. They were canceling each other out. The battle between good and evil had moved onto Amazon's website. I had no idea there were so many people out there who hated or strongly disliked God and religion.
"It was evident we were in a stalemate. And that meant we would not win the contest. I had to do something."
So Smathers sent out an e-mail blitz and online press releases to many Christians, encouraging them to vote for Rachel's Challenge. "I felt they needed to know they had an opportunity to do more than just complain about the decadent immoral programming blanketing this nation," he said. "Now they had an opportunity to act by voting this film into the winner's circle. Suddenly 5-star votes began outnumbering the 1-star votes."
And that voting carried Rachel's Challenge to the victory.
Smathers said that in winning the competition—and even in entering it in the first place—he and Lindgren had one goal in mind: "We felt we had a story that could win and bring glory to the Lord at the same time."
Asked why they wanted to do a film about Rachel Scott, Smathers said, "Because it was an emotionally moving story we felt would give glory to God. And her challenge is being carried out by young people influenced by [her father] Darrell Scott's in-school assembly program (called Rachel's Challenge), which presents Rachel's story as a way of combating school violence."
Smathers and Lindgren plan to use Rachel's Challenge as a segment in their TV series, "Everyday Heroes," about ordinary people doing extraordinary things to help others or to overcome tremendous odds.
© 2005 Christianity Today International. All rights reserved.Click for reprint information. 1 of 1
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