Student filmmakers shine at showcase in Bedford

Rev Up 250 Winners.

By DANIELA RYNOTT

Eighth-grader Benjamin Trotta summed up the evening of May 14 at the packed Bedford Playhouse where student films were shown on the big screen:

“Bedford has unparalleled community pride.”

The Rev Up 250 Student Video Showcase winners were recently honored at the Bedford Plahouse as part of the town of Bedford’s yearlong semiquincentennial celebration.

It brought together students whose visual media explored what it means to grow up in, and belong to, this community. The grand prize of $1,776 — sponsored by the Bedford Historical Society — went to Trotta and his collaborator, Joseph Torres, both eighth graders at Fox Lane Middle School. 

All other winners received $250 prizes, courtesy of community partners including the Bedford Village Chowder & Marching Club, the Women’s Civic Club of Katonah, Friends of John Jay Homestead, and Life Stories.

Torres, who directed their documentary “One Nation Under God,” said the goal of the video was to live up to the country’s name.  

“Our goal was to unite everybody — to really make the United States rather than the divided states,” he said. 

The film took viewers on a walking tour of Bedford’s historical sites, from the courthouse to the cemetery. The two students tag-teamed, with Trotta bringing historical knowledge and on-camera presence, and Torres handling production with CapCut editing software.

Trotta, who Torres described as someone who “knows everything about Bedford,” framed the film around a single word: perseverance. 

“People in Bedford are committed to seeing our community thriving,” he said. “Perseverance — I think that’s a great word for this video. It’s showing how Bedford perseveres.” 

He walked through the film’s structure almost like a tour guide. The courthouse, he noted, was burned by the Green Dragoons on July 11, 1779, and rebuilt in 1787. The cemetery holds veterans of both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. 

“I bet many people just pass by the graveyard and they see the flags, but they want to know more,” Trotta said. “We wanted to show them that these are not just everyday things that you see on your rendezvous to oHHo [The Old Firehouse] or [Bedford] 234. These are important, essential parts of our country’s history.”

John Jay High School students Elise Templeton, a sophomore, and Maggie Lawton, a senior, took a more personal approach to the contest with their video, “America’s Favorite Pastime.”

The two, friends since early childhood, bonded through years spent on the same travel softball team and the fact that they live up the street from each other. Their film wove together childhood clips of themselves playing softball with the deeper history of baseball in America, arguing that the sport — whether played in a backyard or a stadium, in 1776 or 2026 — has always brought people together.

“Baseball has been around for a while and still brings people together. You can still make memories and friendships and a sense of community through something so tiny but yet so big,” Templeton said.

Panelists at the Bedford Playhouse praised the video for being personal and heartfelt while also speaking to a broader community aspect.

When asked about a standout video from one of their peers, Templeton and Lawton shouted out Amity Doyle, a Hackley School sophomore. At Katonah’s John Jay Homestead, she performed in a music video her original song, titled “Lady Liberty.” 

Inspired by the folk tradition of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, Doyle wrote a song about American patriotism and the shared experiences of growing up in this country. The closing lyrics — ”We are the people, hand in hand, created equal across the land” — capture the song’s spirit. 

The showcase also recognized a group entry from John Jay High School — Maria DeGaetano, Clare Doherty, Cassady Tondorf and Alix Siegal created a video titled “Too Much Bedford for Three Minutes,” which highlighted the many historical sites woven into the town’s everyday life.

“Even though so much time has passed, the town still has the same strong sense of community and connection that it did years ago,” DeGaetano said. “Making this video helped us appreciate how much history surrounds us every day and how important community still is today.” 

Their film aimed to show Bedford as a place where the past and present are interwoven and history is alive in daily gathering places.

Taken together, the films reflected a notion that the evening’s panelists kept returning to, that Bedford’s history does not just lie in its archives or historical monuments, but also in the residents and the stories they choose to tell. 

As panelist John Cronin urged the students that night, “never be afraid to have an idea.”