A student film two years in the making is finally completed.
Central School art teacher Marc Nelson’s seventh and eighth grade classes recently finished up their stop-motion film “The Star Within,” which was released on YouTube on Nov. 7.
“My students are extremely proud of their production and excited and honored that the film is being shared widely in Ukraine,” Nelson said.
Based loosely on a true story, the two-part stop motion film spans over 80 years, and tells the story of Ruth, a Ukrainian Jewish woman, who loses her family during the Nazi invasion of Eastern Europe during World War II. Part two, picks up Ruth’s story when she is in her 90s and faces the invasion of her homeland, this time by Russian forces. Ruth decides to sacrifice everything and risk it all to save the life of a young girl.
“It’s a story of sacrifice where a mom saved the life of a child and the child has never forgotten it,” Nelson said in May at the Central School Strawberry Festival, where attendees were given a sneak peak at the film’s handcrafted sets.
Nelson said he is very proud of the end product and his student’s devotion to completing it.
“I am immensely honored and privileged to be able to work with such compassionate, talented and inspiring young artists,” he said.
The idea for the film came to Nelson while he was listening to NPR and heard the story of a Ukrainian woman and developed it into an idea for the film.
This is the 17th year that Nelson’s junior high art students have produced stop-motion films using clay figures. For the last six years, Nelson has made the project a group effort where students, using popsicle sticks, cardboard, fabric and other odds and ends, work together to create the figures and the sets for the movie.
The movie, “The Star Within” can be viewed on YouTube here.
