17 films made by student filmmakers show at Varsity Theatre Wednesday, June 5 and June 12
By Cameron Aalto, Ashland.News
Southern Oregon University celebrates its 19th annual Student Film Festival on two Wednesdays, June 5 and June 12, at the Varsity Theatre. The dual screening event is a co-production between SOU’s Student Film Club and Digital Cinema Class “Film Festival Programming & Promotion.”
Student director of the festival, Riley Carter, a junior majoring in sustainability and minoring in Digital Cinema, said, “the film festival is really just about celebrating student work and student artwork in particular… this really is just a showcase for students, by students — for everyone to enjoy, really.”
The Film Festival Programming & Promotion class is an upper division course that provides historical and critical readings of art festivals and film distribution which the class then uses to plan and coordinate the annual festival. The class, taught by professor Christopher Lucas, is described by publicist Ripley Pierotti as a “practical experience for event promotion and production as students promote, produce, and program the university’s annual film festival.”
The class has a total of 13 students — who, Lucas said, “have done amazing. I mean, this is a pretty ambitious project to put together from just a standing start at the beginning of the term. A lot of these students have never attended a film festival, so we learn about what a festival is and about how festivals play a really important role in the ecosystem of cinema.”
Lucas said the class has been responsible for planning both screenings, organizing an after party and an awards ceremony, screening each individual film, and additionally hosting a campus-wide screenplay competition. Out of 35 films submitted, the class chose 17 to be screened at the festival. To screen the films, students utilized a scoring mechanism that is used globally for film festivals called FilmFreeway.
The deets
General admission tickets are free for SOU students, $5 for general admission
Location: Varsity Theatre
Dates: 6 p.m. June 5, 7 p.m. June 12
Tickets for the June 5 show are for sale at the door
Tickets for the June 12 are available on the Varsity Theatre website
In reference to her position as director of the festival, Carter says, “I’m collaborating with a lot of people that I haven’t been able to work with before, so that’s really exciting and … it’s a better way to learn communication and management skills that I haven’t gotten to practice very well and it’s just — it’s a very collaboration-based class.”
This year, the festival accepted films written and directed by SOU students, SOU alumni (who have graduated in or after the spring of 2023), and high school or community college students who intend to enroll at SOU.
The festival will be awarding prizes to filmmakers in 13 different categories. Some of the prize categories are: best story, best cinematography, best acting, best editing, best sound, and best comedy. Prize decisions will be made by a jury of more than 20 local filmmakers and media professionals. The only stipulation for films is that they are 15 minutes or shorter in length.
Carter says that “SOUSFF is a great opportunity for us as students to celebrate art made by fellow students. Our goal this year is to reach out not only to students across multiple disciplines at SOU, but to community members in hopes that they will join in on the festivities. We can’t wait to return to the Varsity Theatre and recognize fresh talent!”
The Varsity Theatre, owned by Coming Attractions Theatres, is donating use of the theater for the festival dates.
Ashland.news intern Cameron Aalto is a senior at Southern Oregon University. Email him at aaltoc@sou.edu.
