Ivy Film Fest fuels cinematic Yalies

Every good liberal arts college has them. At Yale, you might come upon one in the Film Studies Center renting out a copy of Videodrome or talking about the New York Film Festival over frothy lattés at Koffee?. They are aspiring young filmmakers, students who use words like "aestheticize" and hang Belle du Jour posters in their rooms. And on Sat., Dec. 1, Providence will be teeming with them when the city hosts the first-ever Ivy Film Festival, sponsored by the Brown Film Society in partnership with IFILM.com.

"This festival is all about giving exposure to student filmmakers," BFS member and festival coordinator David Peck said. Event organizers have secured a panel of judges, including writer/director James Toback (Bugsy, Black and White, and upcoming Harvard Man), actor/director/Brown alumnus Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where Art Thou?; O) and USC Film School lecturer/producer Barbara Boyle (Bottle Rocket, Basic Instinct, Phenomenon) to review submissions and answer questions. There are even reports that acclaimed director Oliver Stone may make an appearance, although the Brown Film Society is still in negotiations with Stone's representative to work out the details.

COURTESY IVY FILM FESTIVAL

Contest winners will have the opportunity to broadcast their works online through collaboration with IFILM.com. "The deal with IFILM is a really important part of the Festival," Peck said. "As a young filmmaker myself, I feel really limited because once I have made a film, there is nothing clear for me to do with it. With a site like IFILM, you have large audience of people who are eager to see breakthrough work."

While the Wed., Nov. 7 submission deadline is fast approaching, Peck expects to have contributions from all eight Ivy League schools and notes that event organizers have already received entries ranging from documentaries and dramas to comedies, mockumentaries, and animation from Cornell, Princeton, Penn, Brown, and Yale. Although primarily an Ivy League event, the film festival is accepting works from other schools and has already received submissions from places like the Rhode Island School of Design.

In New Haven, UPIX (University Pictures Association) Co-President Caitlin Taylor, PC '03, has been working with Peck to coordinate Yale's contributions. In addition to an extensive poster campaign publicizing the event, she has contacted all campus film organizations for submissions and acquired funding from the Yale College Dean's Office. Taylor will assist in the festival's initial selection process—but, as she is quick to add, she will not be involved in the critique of any Yalie's films—and she will help plan transportation to the event next month.

Several Yale students are submitting their works to the festival. Milk, a 16mm black-and-white comedy written by and starring Jonathan Sela, DC '04, and directed by current UPIX presidents Johnathan Fireman, CC '03, and Taylor was screened at last spring's UPIX film festival. Taylor describes it as "one man's epic journey to find milk for his cereal as he is attacked by his alarm clock, accosted by the strange folk in his neighborhood, and eventually forced to fight a ruthless gang for the object of his desire."

Tucker Capps, JE '02, has submitted Clockwork, a film he wrote and co-directed last fall while attending FAMU, the Czech national film academy. A "surreal office fantasy," Clockwork details the strange rebellion of an office employee who becomes tormented by the passage of time.

Ross Wachsman, ES '02, former UPIX co-president, has entered two films: Poster Wars, a satirical tribute to the proliferation of postering on college campuses, and Emotional Vacation, a dark film about "a young person dealing with an overabundance of loss and tragedy" that was recently a regional finalist in the Student Academy Awards.

Yale filmmakers, it would seem, have embraced the Brown event. Wachsman praises Yale's "active filmmaking community" and particularly UPIX, whose members are filming at least four shorts this semester while working on three in post-production. Capps, a film studies major, will be shooting his senior pro-ject this spring and echoes Wachsman's sentiments. "In the last couple of years some good short films have come out of nothing more than Sudler money, borrowed cameras, and the determined enthusiasm of a few students," he said. These Yalies are hopeful that their enthusiasm and skill will impress the judges come December.

Back to A&E...