In early August, members of POPPYN screened one of their news segments for famed director Spike Lee and other international filmmakers at the second annual BlackStar Film Festival, held in Philadelphia.

“Attending the festival gave me a real boost of confidence,” said Tiffani Hall, a POPPYN crew member and rising senior at Philadelphia High School for Girls. “It got me even more excited about making films.”

Launched in 2010 as an extension of Temple’s University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia (UCCP), POPPYN is a youth-produced news show that seeks to include youth in the conversations about issues that affect them. The student producers of POPPYN -- which stands for Presenting Our Perspective on Philly Youth News -- hail from Temple as well as from local high schools and community colleges.

POPPYN’s piece was among BlackStar’s featured screenings of 75 films from around the world that promote the "vision and understanding of the global black experience," as BlackStar founder Maori Karmael Holmes articulates in the festival's mission statement.

“Film festivals can be a transformative experience for emerging filmmakers,” said Nuala Cabral, Media Productions & Communications Manager for UCCP. “Seeing their work valued by a larger audience can motivate students to take their craft more seriously. I know this from personal experience, and I see it in our students.”

At the festival, POPPYN producers attended the panel discussion "By Any Means Necessary: Producing Independent Film," which included Spike Lee along with notable directors and producers Dennis Dortch, Numa Perrier and Nefertite Nguvu.

“The festival was a chance for me to see how black filmmakers are approaching their work,” said Terence Lewis, a freshman at Delaware County Community College and a participant with UCCP programming since age 13.

”Meeting other black filmmakers and supporters of independent black filmmaking was important for our youth, who are largely African-American and have not been exposed to the independent black filmmaking scene before,” said Cabral.

Watch POPPYN every Thursday on Philadelphia's Public Access Channel: PhillyCAM (Comcast 66/Verizon 29).