Sacramento, CA - Assemblymember Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate) will hold the 2005 Southeast Student Film Festival on June 18, 2005. The film festival is organized to encourage high school students from southeast Los Angeles County communities to develop a greater appreciation for the arts and to consider careers in the film and entertainment industry. Professions in film are often overlooked by many young people in Southeast Los Angeles County despite the fact that movie and television studios are just a few miles away in Downey.

The student film festival has participants from over two hundred high school students from nine area high schools including Bell Gardens HS, Bellflower HS, Belmont HS, Lakewood HS, Lynwood HS, Ramona HS, Roosevelt HS, South Gate HS, and Los Angeles Wilson HS. Various actors, directors, producers and screenwriters have participated in the film festival in the past including Moctezuma Esparza, chair of the New America Alliance Institute, and Sergio Arau and Yareli Arizmendi, creators of A Day Without a Mexican.