Mason Sklut ’14, Maggie Sloane ’14 and Sergio Ingato ’15 co-produced "BrocKINGton," which was recognized in July at the 33rd Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival.
A documentary film directed by three Elon University alumni was named Best Documentary Short Film in the Grand Jury Awards at the 33rd Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival. Outfest, held July 9-19, is billed as the nation’s leading LGBT film festival.
Mason Sklut ’14, Maggie Sloane ’14 and Sergio Ingato ’15, all media arts and entertainment majors in the School of Communications, directed the 8-minute documentary “BrocKINGton” highlighting transgender student Blake Brockington, who was named homecoming king of his high school in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Outfest recognized the film for its inspiring portrait of a beloved young activist and advocate for transgender rights.
The film was originally produced during the spring 2014 semester as part of Assistant Professor Nicole Triche’s “Producing the Documentary” class.
Triche said the original idea for the documentary was more broadly focused on the transgender community, but after some workshopping the students decided to narrow the topic to a story about a single individual. They came across a news story about Brockington and decided to center their film on him. Sklut, Sloane and Ingato made multiple trips to Charlotte to complete the filming.
“They worked very hard on this project,” Triche said in fall 2014. “I’m really proud of the students and the film they made.” Last fall, “BrocKINGton” was named Best Documentary Short at the Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival in Texas.
Founded by UCLA students in 1982, Outfest is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization promoting equality by creating, sharing and protecting LGBT stories on the screen. Over the past three decades, Outfest has showcased thousands of films from around the world.