Daniel Murphy documentary wins film fest award

As a senior last year at Daniel Murphy Catholic High School, Sean Flowers joined with a group of classmates to document their school’s last days as an active campus.

They had hoped that the video they produced might spur the Los Angeles Archdiocese to save the 55-year-old school, which had been battered by declining enrollments and financial strains, but it closed at the end of the school year.

But the student project, "We Are Noble Men," is bearing some fruit: Earlier this month, it won first place in its category at the 2008 Oxnard Youth Digital Film Festival.

The award, said Flowers, is a bittersweet recognition of a beloved campus that produced alumni such as L.A. City Councilman and former Police Chief Bernard C. Parks and television newscaster Patrick Healy. And it is a testament to students’ enduring loyalty.

"I was very surprised that we won," said Flowers, 19, now a student at Santa Monica College. "It’s a recognition of all of our efforts to show what Daniel Murphy was. And the video will probably keep Daniel Murphy alive a long time because of how powerful it is."

Kitty Merrill, a television production specialist at Oxnard College and this year’s film festival director, said she was impressed with the sense of determination and fervor displayed in the Daniel Murphy project.

"I loved the combination of the heart in it and the diversity of voices they captured," Merrill said. "One of the things I hope for youth to get out of participating in this festival is that they find things that they care about passionately, and that is the thing that I got from the Daniel Murphy students."

The project’s team included about 20 students in teacher Luella Wagner’s television production class who interviewed classmates, alumni and some of the Dominican fathers who first ran the school. The father of one of the students, film and television director Chuck Vinson, helped in editing the video.

Wagner had been at the school only a year when it closed. "I’ll always treasure that year at Daniel Murphy," said Wagner, who now teaches religion at Alemany High School. "This video makes it more than a memory."

Flowers is studying psychology and film in college, but the film festival win is pushing him to flex his more creative muscles.

"That boosted my courage, like ‘All right, I did help to make that film, and it has won an award,’ so yes, I’m really happy how it turned out."

-- Carla Rivera