Students, parents, and staff gathered on the Green to celebrate the 11th annual M-A Student Film Festival on Friday night. After weeks of storyboarding, filming, and editing, student filmmakers got to watch and show off their productions on the big screen.
This year’s film festival differed from previous years as, instead of being hosted in the Performing Arts Center, it was on the Green. “I needed a change this year,” Digital and Advanced Filmmaking teacher John Giambruno said.
While the majority of entries were sourced from M-A’s Digital Filmmaking class, there were also submissions from independent student filmmakers. The 14 films submitted were eligible to win an award based on five categories: Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Scriptwriting, and Best in the Fest. A sixth award, Audience Favorite, was decided based on an audience vote and was revealed during M-A Today! on Tuesday.
The winners of the five categories were: In Permanence, directed by senior Daniel Farrell for Best Cinematography; Illumination, directed by junior Charlotte Anthony for Best Screenplay; The Squad, directed by senior Xander Eschelman for Best Scriptwriting and Audience Favorite; and Puppetown, directed by senior Emiko Edmunds for Best in the Fest.
This year, many submissions had dark undertones, unafraid to show elements of horror and depictions of violence. “Last year, there were a lot of depictions of relationship issues, and a couple of years ago, there were a lot of shoot-em-ups,” he said.
Despite the horror-like dark mood of film submissions, the festival opened on a light-hearted note, with the first short film shown being Big Idea, directed by juniors Noam Bertrot and Cyrus Bitton. The film, a sweet and self-aware comedy, centers around two high school students scrambling to come up with an idea for a film right before their own film festival.
“The whole year, we were rethinking ideas, but we pretty much procrastinated,” Bitton said. “It wasn’t until Friday of this week that we had the idea to do this. We had to do reshoots on Monday night, and the submission was due on Tuesday.”
This year’s winner for Best in The Fest, Puppetown, is set in a world where everyone communicates through sock puppets and specifically follows one girl’s struggle with her identity. It was written, directed, and edited by Edmunds, while cinematography was handled by senior Anna Lucia Lasky.
“I really feel like I’m a kid at heart,” Edmunds said. “I wanted to bring that kind of nostalgic coming-of-age vibe to the film, especially because I’m getting older.”
For the first time ever in the history of this event, an animated film won for Best Screenplay. Illumination, created entirely by Anthony, is a short animated film about a drained worker trying to rediscover his creativity.
“This film was created during a time when I was feeling kind of burnt-out creatively. And it was about rediscovering my spark and why I like making art,” Anthony said. “I think filmmaking is interesting in how it changes the way you perceive things,” she said.
This year’s winner for Best Cinematography, In Permanence, was a collaboration between Farrell and senior Brooke Fehrenbach. The film revolves around a young woman wandering around the woods with her camera as she hears echoes of a boy.
The Squad, a short film written and directed by Eschelman, won the award for Best Scriptwriting. The production is a nine-minute epic about four high-school students teaming up to change their grades just before graduation and features many twists and turns throughout its runtime.
Many student filmmakers expressed how great it is for M-A to host a festival that highlights the hard work and dedication they put into their passions. “The film festival is a great opportunity to showcase the work of many filmmakers,” Edmunds said. “For me personally, it was really cool to be able to watch my film on a big screen with my friends.”
“The festival is important because it allows people to express their creativity in ways that other events can’t really do,” Bitton said. “There’s nothing like this. You can really express yourself in many different ways.”
“I am very proud of all of them,” Giambruno said about the efforts made by students in his filmmaking classes. “I know how much they work, and I hope they know I see that, I am flattered by the effort they put into the movies for my festival,” he added.
