GUTV’s Fifth annual Student Film Festival last Saturday night proved that even without a film program at Georgetown, Hoyas are more than adept behind a camera. As shown by their ever-increasing popularity, there are some film buffs among us, and this year they came out in force.
The panel of 12 judges was made up of Georgetown professors, alumni and professional filmmakers. The 10 judged films were just as varied, including silent films, comedies, dramas and even a documentary. While all had certain strengths, some seemed incomplete and unpolished. Jamie Gray (CAS ‘05) admits that many student filmmakers make the same mistakes.
“You can get way too ambitious,” he explained. “Keep it simple and short. Don’t do it if you don’t have the resources.”
The main stumbling block for most of the films was a shared tendency to stretch themselves too thin. The film .66, He Loved Her had a funny concept, following a man searching for a woman with the perfect hip-to-waist ratio, but the segments of the film didn’t fit together. Gratuitous’s title was sadly appropriate in terms of length.
All the filmmakers clearly had fun with their works, and this energy was contagious for the audience. This was easily demonstrated by The Easy Part, a film about a man trying to run the wrong way across a moving walkway at National Airport. Unfortunately, the film was only shown on Friday night, when the festival ran without the award show hoopla of Saturday but included a few student films that didn’t quite make the cut for the next evening, usually for good reasons.
Concordance, which followed seven stunningly beautiful women around the formal gardens of Dumbarton Oaks, had neither dialogue nor a discernable plot, but held every audience member’s unyielding attention. It was as visually compelling as any professionally made film and also caught the eye of judges, who awarded it Best Cinematography. Best Film went to Monuments, which, although well shot, was a cliched story about a student and his ex-girlfriend who had just gotten an abortion. It was not a bad movie, but most of the other films were better made, had better acting and were more creative. Howard Theater, the sole documentary in competition, won for Best Editing. With great music and interesting interviews, the film was a PBS-quality look at D.C.’s historic Howard Theater, a popular stop for jazz greats in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
It’s not surprising that the three audience favorites were all comedies. Best Actor Arthur Delaney (CAS ‘05) starred in his own film, Roommates, which also won Best Sound Editing. The incredibly funny film told the story of a freakishly popular zombie and his jealous roommate. Prima Donnas: A Speech and Debate Mockumentary, which followed two high school speech and debate nerds, could rival Best in Show any day.
“The editing was the hardest part,” Madeline McGrane (CAS ‘05), a former speech and debate nerd herself, said. She wrote, directed and edited the film. “It was my first movie so I was also learning the software. The movie just took shape once the camera started rolling.”
As Georgetown offers only a few film theory classes and none on technical film, students are usually left on their own to figure out the equipment. Despite this lack of training, GUTV provides all the resources needed to make a film.
“My film was extremely low-budget,” Sarah Ferrante (CAS ‘07) said of her charming short film Daily News, about an obsessive-compulsive man attempting to read the newspaper without getting ink on his hands. “That is the only thing I spent money on: the newspaper.”
Gray scored one of the festival’s biggest hits with I Heart Rummy, which followed a granola-eating hippie played by Best Actor runner-up and current Voice staff member Lauren Gaskill (CAS ‘07). Once safely back in her room, the closet neo-con strips the Che and Bob Marley posters off her walls to reveal extensive shrines to Donald Rumsfeld. At a debate Gaskill’s character falls for her young Republican opponent, but as she stumbles out of his bed later, she discovers his own dirty secret-a Hillary Clinton obsession. The film was quirky, brilliantly shot, superbly edited, well-acted and proved in every way that Georgetown’s filmmakers deserve more attention.
“After the festival last year all these people kept coming up to me and saying ‘there is this huge underground film movement,’” Gray said. “It just keeps growing and growing every year. It’s only a matter of time before Georgetown takes notice and gets a film studies department.” If the festival is any indication, that time can’t be far away.
