The community will be impressed with the talent hidden within the walls of John Jay High School, say student organizers of the first annual John Jay student film festival.

But they’re not boastful. They’re serious about film. Serious about the skills they’ve acquired over the last year in Diane Nerwen’s Digital Moviemaking and Animation class. 

“This is something we’ve been working toward all year,” said Maya Felder. “We’ve all been thinking: I want to be good enough to get into this festival.”

The festival was organized by ArtsALIVE, the school district’s arts booster organization, and a student sub-committee of the organization.

The committee solicited submissions from the entire student body and received 37 films, which were juried by a panel of community members and professionals. A range of genres and subjects were considered, from documentaries to dramas and parodies, to music videos, films about skateboarding and a mockumentary about prom.

“This experience has expanded what we’ve learned—it’s become a real-world focus instead of just a class assignment,” said Sarah White, a film student and festival rganizer.

Her classmate, Connor McCune, added that it was gratifying to see his hard work “go somewhere.”

“It’s great to be able to show it to an audience,” he said.

Though some films were cut after the selection process, most of the film students had their work accepted for Saturday’s event. Emma Harckham said she made a film about people and their self-perception versus how others view them. McCune and White both made promotional videos for the film festival (one YouTube version is posted with this story.

The students were advised throughout the year-long planning process by Kelly Miller, a member of ArtsAlive, and Donna Walsh, the organization’s president. “We’ve been so lucky to have the Katonah Museum as a partner—they have hosted meetings for us and are donating the space for the event,” said Walsh.

The film students had a steep learning curve, but they said they are already looking forward to planning the second annual festival. Next year the moviemaking class has been re-worked and will be called Take Two: Film Studies and Filmmaking. It will have an interdisciplinary focus including English and art. “Students will analyze films and make nonfiction and documentary or issue-oriented films,” said Nerwen.

The evening opens with a panel discussion of film industry professionals, including:

• Chris Wedge (an Oscar winning film director, producer, and co-founder of Blue Sky Studios www.blueskystudios.com)
• Robert Kessler (Grammy award winning composer, sound designer, and producer/director of voice recordings at Kessler Media Productions www.kesslermedia.com)
• Vanessa Smith (Producer, director and cinematographer for PBS, BBC, Discovery, and more www.vanessasmithfilm.com)
• Brian Ackerman (Programming Director at Jacob Burns Film Center www.burnsfilmcenter.org)
• Sarah Fields (documentary filmmaker, member of the Int’l Council of Advisors for the Asian University of Women, and student at Reed College). 

The panel will be moderated Nerwen, a video artist in her own right who has screened her experimental and documentary videos at film festivals and museums including the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Guggenheim Museum, NY and Berlin Film Festival in Germany.

The event begins at 7 pm on Friday, May 20th, the cost is $10.Tickets must be purchased online, here. The program is spon sored by Acadia on Main in Mt. Kisco, and Rooftop Films, in Brooklyn. For more information on the festival or ArtsALIVE, contact:  Kelly Miller, kwheelermiller@hotmail.com or 914.523.9788 or, Donna Walsh, ddwalsh@optonline.net or 914.301.5424.

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Last week, RXR Realty Chairman Scott Rechler addressed a group of fellow real estate executives and joked that there were so many familiar faces he felt like it was his bar mitzvah. Chuckles followed his instructions to leave the gift envelopes in the corner.

Mr. Rechler certainly isn’t hurting for cash. In the past 12 months, RXR has invested more than $3.5 billion in Manhattan real estate, including buying or signing contracts to purchase 4 million square feet of space in four properties. Underpinning the spending spree is a $1 billion-plus fund whose dozen or so investors include the Safra family and Rothschild Realty.

“Over the next 24 months, we are going to be very active,” Mr. Rechler told Crain’s. “We are making a substantial bet on Manhattan.”

That’s a switch from four years ago. In January 2007, the then-chairman of Reckson Associates Realty Corp. sold his public company to SL Green Realty Corp. for $6 billion after deciding the market was too frothy. Sure enough, the average price of a Manhattan office tower tumbled 59% between 2007 and 2009.

Mr. Rechler may have shown an excellent sense of timing back then, but some real estate executives say RXR is shelling out too much for its recent purchases. They note that rents, while no longer falling, are largely flat. And just like in the boom, scores of buyers are chasing deals. The average price of a Class A office tower rose 73% last year.

“If you aren’t paying a premium, you aren’t getting the property,” said Richard Baxter, a vice chairman at Jones Lang LaSalle’s New York Capital Markets Group, who doesn’t believe that Mr. Rechler is overpaying.

The office market in Manhattan is indeed improving. In the first quarter, leasing activity soared 34% from the year-earlier period, to 7.6 million square feet, according to Cushman & Wakefield Inc. In midtown, net effective rents—what the tenant pays after accounting for perks like construction allowances—rose 24%, to $57.82 per square foot.

Conservative financing is a key part of 43-year-old Mr. Rechler’s investment strategy. RXR’s plan is to pay an average of 50% of a building’s price in cash and fund the rest with long-term loans. That should allow it to ride out any future drops in the market.

A hit list in hand

“Scott is very smart and leads a great team that understands New York,” said Andrew Silberstein, a managing director at Rothschild Realty, which put $150 million into the RXR fund. “They really understand how to create value with real estate and not just financial engineering.”

RXR entered Manhattan in August 2009. Mr. Rechler had quietly mined his contacts, built over a lifelong real estate career, and compiled a hit list of buildings with financial problems. His goal was to swoop in and snap up a bargain.

“I wanted to be the first call when anything was for sale,” he said.

RXR’s first Manhattan purchase was buying discounted debt on a 556,000-square-foot office condominium at 1166 Sixth Ave. that is leased to two gold-plated tenants. The firm is now under contract to buy 40% of the condo.

Growing bolder, RXR in June 2010 bought 49% of 340 Madison Ave. in a deal that values the property at $570 million, or $760 a square foot. Mr. Rechler knew the building faced a refinancing in 18 months, which would make it less attractive to other investors. He took the risk—and is now in the process of refinancing the property in a deal that will bring in an additional partner.

RXR won 1330 Sixth Ave.—a prize Mr. Rechler had been eyeing since 2009, when Harry Macklowe was forced to give it back to lenders—in a bidding war late last year. Still, the $400 million purchase price was nearly $100 million less than what Mr. Macklowe paid in 2006.

When RXR bought the building, rents were about $70 a square foot. Recently. a tenant signed a $100-a-square-foot lease, Mr. Rechler notes with pride.

He understands that not all rents will jump so quickly. RXR has a contract to pay $900 million, or about $400 a square foot, for the Starrett-Lehigh Building, the sprawling, 2.3 million-square-foot property in Chelsea.

Chelsea, of all places

Mr. Rechler, a midtown maven, says he’s drawn to the West Side neighborhood because it’s becoming a center for media and technology companies that are a vital part of New York’s economy. Google’s recent purchase of its Eighth Avenue home and the eventual construction of Hudson Yards will only add to the area’s allure.

The Starrett-Lehigh Building’s rents, currently around $40 a square foot, could jump to $70, he predicts. Of course, that could take a decade. “I have,” he said, “very patient money.”