ESCONDIDO -- It's not Sundance or Cannes, but some aspiring filmmakers from local schools will have their own festival next week when the inaugural Escondido Youth Media Festival debuts Wednesday.

The free hour-long festival starts at 7 p.m. at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. Four award-winning student productions will be shown, along with other projects that highlight Project Live, the six-year-old program that has earned the Escondido Union School District a prestigious state Golden Bell Award and other accolades.

As part of Project LIVE -- Learning through Instructional Video in Education -- students in kindergarten through eighth grade learn about video production by creating short films about subjects they are learning, which in turn gives them a greater understanding of the subject itself.

Frank Maggi, an education technology teacher with the district, said the evening will include a talk about research that has shown how visual media helps students connect with subjects they are studying.

Mission Middle School teacher Tamara Whitney has been involved with Project LIVE for a few years and is scheduled to speak at the festival about how the program has helped her teach students.

"I've evolved from a teacher with a camera in hand to a teacher putting cameras in the hands of my students," she said.

Among the shorts to be shown is "The Number Line Dance," a music video based on a song written by Mission Middle School teacher Alex Kajitani, a California Teacher of the Year and one of four finalists nominated to be the 2009 National Teacher of the Year. He will be in Washington, D.C., next week to be interviewed as part of the selection process.

The festival also will feature a clip of Kajitani performing an a cappella version of "The Number Dance" in his classroom and the video "Going in Circles," which won a County Office of Education iVIE (Innovative Video in Education) Award for L.R. Green Elementary School teacher Rod Shepherd's fifth-grade class. A video about Bear Valley Middle School students who create a daily morning news school also will be in the program.

Katie Ragazzi, executive director of the Escondido Education Foundation, said her group created the festival to showcase the creativity of students in the Escondido Union School District.

"It's amazing when you hear the testimonials of the teachers and students in the program," she said. "It literally changes the way students learn."

The videos themselves can be surprisingly creative, professional and even moving, Ragazzi said.

"They make you laugh," she said. "They make you cry. It's so amazing what these kids can do."

Ragazzi said that while the inaugural festival will focus on videos, the foundation has called it a "media festival" because it hopes to continue it next year with a program that also features still photos and music created by students.

As the program evolves, she said it may become more like a film festival by screening projects that have been submitted and judged.

The festival also will include a drawing for two video cameras. Only students are eligible, and they must be present to win, Ragazzi said.

The city is not charging the district for use of the arts center, and Blanchard for Others, an outreach of the Escondido-based Ken Blanchard Cos., is sponsoring the event.

Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 or gwarth@nctimes.com.