George Mason University Film and Video Studies students gather in Studio A for interviews. Photo by Chris Franklin
By Jamie Rogers
Cinema lovers likely have circled Friday, Dec. 5 on the calendar, the date of the George Mason University Fall Film Showcase.
About 30 films from three sections of George Mason’s Film and Video Studies program will be featured, says Giovanna Chesler, director of the program.
The showcase, which is from 3 to 9:30 p.m. in the Johnson Center Cinema on the Fairfax Campus, will feature 11 final film projects by senior producing course students, 13 films by documentary directing course students and five films by graduate students of the Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies program, she says.
A list of featured film titles can be found here on the Film and Media Studies program site.
Reflecting programing trends at international film festivals, the films are each 15 minutes or less, she says. The short run time also gives students a strategic edge as they release their work by improving their storytelling and technical process, Chesler noted.
Students get several opportunities to screen their films for audiences and participate in Q&A sessions after the screenings, she says.
“This is an important part of the development of directors, producers and craft people who study and practice filmmaking,” Chesler says.
Film and Video students attend a Studio A interview filming with Jeffrey Cooper, founder and president of Cut Entertainment Group, and Rick Davis as moderator. Photo by Evan Cantwell
A jury of Film and Video Studies Advisory Board members will select the top fiction and documentary films. There will also be awards based on technical merits, and students in the senior producing course are eligible for an Audience Award, voted on by guests at the showcase.
“The best place to see the films is now—at our Fall Film Showcase—with an audience of more than 200 people. Films are conversation starters and the theater is packed, our audiences are lively, and it is a lot of fun,” Chesler says.
Film and Video Studies major Nathan Garduno will screen his film, “Bow-Tie Optional” at the showcase. The film is about his good friend Andrew Reid and will be shown during the documentary portion of the showcase, between 3 and 5 p.m.
“[Reid] has a weird, quirky feel to him … I want to show that on film and make people smile,” says Garduno, a junior. “Not everyone on campus knows him, but the people he’s interacted with, he’s made them better people.”
The film’s name is a play on the common phrase, “black-tie optional” because Reid always seems to be dressed to the nines.
“He always dresses well. If you don’t see him with a bow tie or a suit tie, it’s really unusual,” Garduno says.
This is the second Mason Fall Film Showcase, but senior film projects have been screened since the first graduates moved through the young program, which started just seven years ago.
The fall film showcase and its spring counterpart, the Mason Film Festival, which also debuted in 2013, are the formalization of the program’s screening process, Chesler says.
The Film and Video Studies Program partners with the Film and Media Studies Program, cinematic arts fraternity Delta Kappa Alpha and SI Films to produce the showcase.
Film and Video Studies student at George Mason University’s Studio A for interviews. Photo by Michael Rose