Southwestern Adventist University’s Communication Department is proud to announce that the film project, Truth, was selected to be shown at the 2018 Fort Worth FotoFest Film Festival. About 20 faculty and students, with faculty sponsor and professor Kyle Portbury, were able to attend the festival held on May 10-21 at the Omni IMAX at the Museum of Science in Fort Worth. Several of the attending students voiced the characters in the animated short film.

“It was an honor to have Truth officially selected to screen at the Fort Worth Focus Film Festival,” said Portbury. “Our students enjoyed the film on the 8-story high Omni IMAX screen. Truth tells the story of Sojourner Truths extemporaneous speech, ‘Ain’t I a Woman.’”

The film, which was funded by a Sicher Endowed Faculty Grant and GoodtoGo Media, is currently screening at other festivals over the next few months ahead of its official release. It was recently shown at the SONscreen Film Festival in the Washington, D.C. area. Student short films Senior Year and Still Senior Year were also selected to be shown at the SONscreen festival.

The Communication Department established the Institute for Christian Film this past year. The program encourages writers to submit scripts for development. The scripts then go through an acceptance phase with the potential for fundraising and further development by the skilled faculty and students in the Communication Department. For more information about the Institute of Christian Film, visit swau.edu/film.

Portbury has won many awards for his own work. Beyond the Search previously won 14 international awards including the prestigious CINE Golden Eagle. Portbury also won Best Documentary for his documentary A Mountain Within at the Mountain Film Festival in California, among others. Two of his films were nominated for awards at the 2017 International Christian Film Festival in Florida.