‘True Love’ is a silent short film inspired by the 1920′s and Hollywood’s Golden Era. It was written, directed, produced and edited by year 11 photography student Ethan Jenkins, who has studied filmmaking on his photography GCSE course.

Ethan will submit this incredible piece into the BPF Shorts Film Competition. To find out more about the film competition see the BPF Shorts Film Competition Website. The submission deadline is the 1st of June.

Congratulations to Ethan and his hardworking team of year 11s, who filmed this during the course of one day at HCH at the beginning of this term. A great achievement and best of luck in the competition later on this term.

Ayrton Cable (Year 5) wrote and directed a film for a competition run by the Parliamentary Education Department. The competition is run nationwide, and is for children 11-16 years old. Entrants are invited to submit a short film outlining an idea for a new law, or an amendment to an existing one.

Ayrton’s film, called “Animal Farm Law”, advocates a clear labelling system on animal food products, (for example, bacon), indicating the standard of welfare in the farm from where the animal(s) came. As he discovered in his research, most of the animals slaughtered for meat, and most of our eggs, milk, and cheese, come from animals in factory farms. Factory farming is an intensive form of farming, and (even in Britain, where welfare standards are higher than in many countries), animals are harshly, and even cruelly, treated.

Animal Farm Law

The film includes interviews with pupils and staff from HCH, and also features music by reknown jazz musician, our very own, Roberto Manes.

The charity Compassion in World Farming, which is passionately supported by Joanna Lumley, has asked Ayrton to partner with them in its forthcoming national campaign for clearer labelling, involving briefings to the media, to MPs, and to the general public.

The official competition announcement, and a link to the film, is on: Radiowaves.co.uk

Watch Animal Farm Law (Requires Flash player)

Ayrton’s entry was “Highly Commended” by the judges, and he received a letter from panel chair, Lord Puttnam, congratulating him. Out of the almost 120 entries, his was the only entry by an individual (as distinct from an entire secondary school) which was commended.

Ice-skater Serena Howard (Year 7) continues to go from strength to strength. To add to a string of recent successes (including coming 1st in her class at the Trophee Romand International competition in Neuhatel, Switzerland), Serena won her class at the Cardiff Open last month and will now compete at a qualifying event for the British Championships.

Video of her winning performance:

Serena and Veronika

The long awaited Spring Concert took place on Friday 30th March; those who had high expectations were not disappointed. The variety of music performed – jazz, classical, rock, pop, folk and music theatre – was truly impressive. The youngest performer was only three years old. It was clear, that the focus and dedicated practise paid off handsomely. The audience enthusiastically joined in many items. No doubt, this occasion was a true Hampton Court House triumph!

With great fanfare….. the announcement was made! Hampton Court House has secured 25 tickets, for students, to the Olympic and Paralympic Games! Hampton Court House is on the Olympic cycling road race route, the start and finish to the time trial and the Torch is run to the Palace. HCHOCOG was also announced as the organising committee for the next Olympic Term; students and staff are invited to join and the progress will be blogged on the Rambler and on our space of the ‘Get Set‘ network website.

25 Olympic Tickets announced at assembly by Ben Ruddin

Congratulations to Art Teacher Selwyn Leamy for having his painting ‘The Violet Hour’ exhibited in the ‘The Lynn Paitner-Stainers’ exhibition in the Mall Gallery, Trafalgar Square. Selwyn’s painting was chosen out of 1100 paintings and will be on show until 5th April.

Also congratulations to Art Teacher Natalie Kavanagh for exhibiting her painting ‘Judah’ along side the work of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin at the ‘Rove Gallery‘ in Hoxton Square. Natalie’s exhibition runs until the 15th April. Please feel free to visit both galleries over the holidays, admission is free!

Selwyn with guest artist Ken Howard next to his work

To view the Mall Galleries website, click here. Check out Selwyn Leamy Official Website to see more of his work. The Rove Gallery website can be seen here with all the other work submitted to the exhibition.

The Violet Hour by Selwyn Leamy

On Wednesday the members of the SETi club (Science club) performed a series of interesting demonstrations for the Lower School from Nursery to Year 2. Alex Lynch (Year 5) performed “Magic Liquids” by playing with acids, alkalis and indicators. Alex followed with the demonstration “Egg in a Bottle”. Bert from Year 6 helped the students to create small fireballs. Hayden Roberts (Year 8) performed the “Elephant Toothpaste” using potassium iodide to decompose hydrogen peroxide. Cameron Ashbrook (Year 9) showed everyone how to bend a stream of water using electrostatics while Ariel Ropert (Year 10) demonstrated the burning of compounds creating some exciting colors. Oscar Vie, Jooheon Lee and Timothy Lillis (Year 7) explored heating up coke cans which could then be filled upside down when immersed in water. Although this didn’t go completely to plan, they assisted with the other experiments. Everyone on the SETi club was very happy to perform to potential future scientists. We hope the Science Show was a fun and educational experience for the Lower School. The SETi club hopes to organise a bigger event at the end of the Summer term. The images from the Science Show will be uploaded to the Gallery section of the website in the next few weeks.

The 'Elephant Toothpaste' Experiment