Six-year-old filmmaker's trip to the White House
Six-year-old Noah Gue has a question. "Are you paying attention?" Gue asks, as a camera pans over a frozen landscape.The 15 films featured at a festival hosted by the White House were made by students age 6-16 who were chosen from among some 1,500 entries on this year's theme of giving back."It's like the Sundance or Cannes of film festivals that are open to the public through a government website," Obama said. The young filmmakers were joined in the East Room turned movie theater by entertainment industry leaders, including Academy Award-winning actress Hillary Swank and Steve McQueen, director of the Oscar-winning "12 Years a Slave." "Today we are celebrating a 6 year old in Montana," President Obama said Friday. "He's missing teeth but he is also challenging us to see conservation through a child's eyes." In his movie, the award-winning Noah Gue explored the issue of climate change.Gue attended the screening with his parents -- a photographer and a firefighter -- whose families have called Montana home for generations."I realized that we have to take the boys now to see some of the things in Montana that will be gone but by the time they are adults," Amy Larson Gue, Noah's mother, said.Noah and his family said they were surprised when they received the call from the White House. "We submitted it with the hashtag," the filmmaker's proud father, Michael Gue, said. "We never expected anybody to watch it." Noah hopes his White House screening is just the beginning of his illustrious career, and he's already thinking about the subject of his next work: a film featuring "animals and plants and the rainforest."