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.

The musical performance in the Calderwood Courtyard will begin at 6:30pm. Please enter the museums via the Quincy Street entrance.

The film screening will begin at 7:30pm and will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level. If attending only the screening and not the earlier event in the courtyard, please enter the museums via the entrance on Broadway at 7:30pm.

Please note that while face coverings are optional in all other spaces in the Harvard Art Museums, they are required for attendees at all programs in Menschel Hall. The museums will make disposable masks available for visitors who do not bring their own. Please review our general visitor policies, including details on COVID-related precautions.

Free admission, but seating is limited. Reservations may be arranged by clicking on the event on this form beginning on Friday, May 13, after 10am. Ticket registration closes at 4pm on the day of the event.

Limited complimentary parking is available in the Broadway Garage, 7 Felton Street, Cambridge.

Support for this program is provided by the Richard L. Menschel Endowment Fund as well as the M. Victor Leventritt Fund, which was established through the generosity of the wife, children, and friends of the late M. Victor Leventritt, Harvard Class of 1935. The purpose of the fund is to present outstanding scholars of the history and theory of art to the Harvard and Greater Boston communities.