25th Annual Do It Your Damn Self!! National Youth Film Festival

Join us for the premiere screening of Community Art Center’s 25th Annual Do It Your Damn Self!! National Youth Film Festival, the longest-running youth film festival in the country. Come early for a musical performance by Lisa Bello and snacks in the Calderwood Courtyard. A panel discussion with the teen filmmakers will follow the screening.

Community Art Center has served residents of the Port neighborhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts since 1937. The organization ensures that youth in the neighborhood have the same access to arts experiences as the youth of other communities in Cambridge. The center became known as a space for young people to explore creative expression and build their narrative storytelling abilities. In 1996, six teen girls at the center decided they’d had enough of the lack of representation and the misrepresentation they were seeing in the media. They picked up cameras and began to tell their own stories, creating a film festival that is hyperlocal but has a national reach.