The smell of popcorn and the click of cameras greeted me at McAlister Auditorium as I walked in. Audience members drifted between concessions, a balloon-adorned Tulane University Student Film Festival branded backdrop for photos and eventually, their seats. I grabbed a yerba mate at the entrance, and volunteers handed me popcorn and a program. I settled into a seat near the front, ready for the third annual Tulane Student Film Festival.
Students produce and host the film festival as part of a class called Film Festivals, which is included in the Strategy, Leadership and Analytics Minor. Professor and documentary producer Jolene Pinder teaches the class and remains the guiding force of the festival despite staying mostly behind the scenes on the day of.
The film festival had two screenings on April 24, and each showed a different set of 10 short films, for a total of 20 student-made films selected from 48 submissions.
A reception and filmmakers panel separated the screenings. The highlight of the reception was free food from Raising Cane’s and Barracuda Taco Stand, both of which were sponsors of the event. Other sponsors included perennial Tulane student favorites Insomnia Cookies, Dat Dog, Guayakí Yerba Mate and The Bead Shop, among others.
SLAM student Benjamin Plachter kicked off the showing as an emcee, applauding the submissions.
“To win this game is to keep playing … There is no finish line, and that is the beauty of it,” said Plachter, in praise of film as an art form.
One film, directed by Sydney Cross and appropriately entitled “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?” guides the audience through New Orleans, set to a recording of a phone call from the director’s brother speaking about how it feels to miss the city.
“The Bench,” directed by Cameron Brown, tells the story of a defining moment in a toxic relationship between a young man and his boyfriend and features almost no dialogue, but I felt it to be the most expressive film of the screening.
One of my favorite films was an environmental documentary entitled “Innocent Ignorance,” directed by Katy Perrault, which showed parallels between the issue of oyster degradation in southeastern Louisiana and in the Chesapeake Bay. The film called attention to the importance of conserving oyster reefs and explored generational differences in perspective, all in less than nine minutes.
The final film of the showing, “The Box,” was one of the most impressive in terms of cinematography. Filmed in Prague by Joey Kleiman and Jack Levine, the film tells the fantastical story of a down-on-her-luck mime who is finally rewarded for her art when she gets trapped in an invisible box.
Filmmakers were in the running for audience awards, jury awards and a “Rising Star” award. The jury award went to “The Box,” and the Rising Star Award went to Cameron Brown, who directed both “The Bench” and “Disco Dreamer,” a film presented in the second showing. Audience favorite awards went to “The Box” and “The Rat King,” directed by Natalie Maher of the first and second showing, respectively.
Films varied widely in length, genre and content, but each was impressive in its own way. The Tulane Student Film Festival is a celebration of the hardworking student filmmakers who are the essence of the festival, and it is a tradition I hope will continue for generations of student filmmakers to come.
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