Rockin' Night at El Paseo Fashion Show

The crowd at the El Paseo Fashion Show was clapping and on its feet Tuesday night to the strains of Proud Mary, Pink Panther music and a salute to the armed forces as the Rocking Roberge Spectacular was just that.

A Fashion Week sponsor and El Paseo boutique, InSanity presented its edgy and sophisticated clothes for the spring, as well as jewelry designed by Denise Robergé.

All proceeds from the night benefitted the Coachella Valley Autism Society of America and Loving All Animals.

Fashion Show Week at the big tent continues Wednesday night with Project Runway. Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show begins at 8 p.m.

Video was shot by Fatima Salcedo, a student in Matt Hamilton and David Vogel's Digital Storytelling Class at Cathedral City High School.

Night Two, El Paseo Fashion Show

Long-legged models and kids with attitude strolled the runway on the second night of the fashion parade at the El Paseo Fashion Week under the big white tent at the corner of El Paseo and Mountain Shadow. Monday night's event featured local stores Tommy Bahama, El Paseo Jewelry, White House Black Market, Cactus Flower Shoe Salon, Wayne's Collection, Eileen Fisher, She She Kids, V&G Hip Wear and Accessories, BB one, Bebe, Tink, Don Vincent, Dani, Josie's on El Paseo, and Chelsea Taylor.

Digital Arts Technology Academy student Spencer McQuinn photographed Monday night's action.

The runway show continues Tuesday night with Rocking Roberge Spectacular. Tent doors open at 7 p.m. with the show beginning at 8 p.m.

DATA Students Provide Total Coverage of El Paseo Fashion Show

Digital Arts Technology Academy (DATA) students at Cathedral City High School are documenting this week's Fashion Week on El Paseo. Sunday evening's show was themed the Best of Saks Fifth Avenue. Monday night the tent opens at 7 p.m for the 8 p.m. show entitled Fashion Runway Bar. The photo at left was taken by DATA senior Spencer McQuin.

DATA digital storytellers document CUE at Convention Center

DATA digital storytellers Jessica Gerrel and Arin Wall filmed and edited CUE Live productions at the Computer Using Educators Conference at the Palm Springs Convention Center on March 18, 2011. The CUE Conference is the largest and oldest education technology conference in California, and among the largest in the United States. Their videos can be viewed on School Tube.

Documentary Exposes AIDS Problem in Africa

Students in the Digital Arts Technology Academy attended a screening of the documentary "Angels in the Dust" Tuesday morning at the Palm Springs High School theater. The film is about Marion Cloete who abandons a life of privilege in Johannesburg to build Botshabelo, a village and school that provides orphaned children with shelter, food and education.

"The film made me reevualuate my health, my life and my family," said DATA senior Jessica Gerrell.

"It made made me realize that there are still good people out there devoting their lives to helping others," said DATA junior Paola Fernandez.

"I admire the Cloete family because they took their entire savings and built an orphange because not a lot of people would take everything they own and put it into an orphanagge to help children who are victims of AIDS," said DATA senior Jennifer Juarez.

James Egan is the Producer of the documentary.

Neely Tucker of the Washington Post wrote this about the documentary: "...you will be moved, if not stunned, by this straightforward, unadorned example of filmmaking. Director Louise Hogarth uses no voice-over narration, no real narrative device to move the story along. She just turned on the camera in 2004 and spent a large chunk of the next two years following Cloete on her duties, which range from playing with children to loading bodies in the mortuary into coffins and then into the back of a pickup."

Following the screening, Katherine Sanchez and Yoryely Rojas, two students in Matt Hamilton's digital storytelling class at Cathedral City High School, sat down with Hogarth to talk about her documentary.

Hogarth told the students that the film had a such a strong impact on her life that she started the orphan bracelet campaign, which is called DO Ubuntu, which means do unto others as you would have them do unto you. She employes women in South Africa who are living with HIV to make the bracelets. The profits go to a program that feeds 200 South African children every day, as well as capital projects, which recently included building a house in Uganda and a wing on an orphanage.

"Before making the documentary, I was very aware of the HIV problem in Africa and I wanted to make the rest of the world aware of it," said Hogarth. "At that point in time, South Africa wasn't able to get any HIV drugs because the president of Africa didn't believe HIV caused AIDS, so I was hoping this documentary would help to rectify that situation and put a spotlight on that situation and encourage people to help in any way they could."

Cathedral City High School photojournalist Spencer McQuinn is creating the runway graphics for the Fashion Week El Paseo Runway Bar. The senior student in the Digital Arts Technology Academy at CCHS spent Monday afternoon shooting images of Christina De Musee's acrylic on canvas art work and then sat down with Palm Springs Life Magazine Fashion Editor Susan Stein to pair the store names with the artwork. At left is an example of his work.

McQuinn is a student in Matt Hamilton's Digital Storytelling Class at Cathedral City High School.

Fashion week is March 20-28.

"Louder Than A Bomb," "Soul Boy" A Hit With PSUSD Students

Students from all over Coachella Valley packed the Palm Springs High School auditorium Wednesday morning to screen the documentary "Louder Than A Bomb" and "Soul Boy." Both films were received with enthusiastic applause by the students.

At left are two of the stars of the documentary, Nate Marshall and Novana Venerable.

The event was sponsored by the Palm Springs International Film Festival whose Programming/Education Outreach Coordinator is Ken Jacobson.

Following the screening, Jennifer Juarez, a student in Matt Hamilton and David Vogel's Digital Storytelling Class at Cathedral City High School, had a chance to interview "Louder Than A Bomb" director Greg Jacobs.

Jennifer: Why did you decide to do this documentary?

Director Greg Jacobs: I was driving by Wrigley Field in Chicago one night, in March of 2005, and I happened to pass by a club called The Metro. The marquee said "Louder Than A Bomb High School Slam Poetry Finals Tonight." There was a line of kids of every shape, size and color all the way down the street. It was so strange to see that kind of diversity on the north side of Chicago on a Saturday night--and for poetry. That meant there were kids inside reading their own poetry. We just thought that was a really interesting thing going on that we didn't know about so we decided to take a look.

Jennifer: What was your biggest challenge?

Director Greg Jacobs: The biggest challenge was how to go about telling the story. It took two years to edit it, and while we had done hundreds of other documentaries, we had never done a feature documentary before. It took a long time to figure out how to tell the story.

Jennifer: How did you pick the high students who are the stars of the documentary?

Director Greg Jacobs: We went the year before to the finals and decided we would take the measure of who was there and who was coming back. We knew that to make a documentary like this, the poems had to be great and the kids had to be interesting as well as great performers. Nate, Nova and the others just jumped out at us in the finals, and they were coming back. It was so obvious they were the great ones to follow. We picked them and only followed them, and they are unbelievable.