Couldn’t get your friends guest passes to Spring Fling? Who cares. The Boychicks are trying to figure out Julian Silver ’12‘s ethnicity. Josh Margolin ’11 investigates, in episode five:
Tag Archives: film
Girl Rising Screening
The incandescent Miranda Orbach ’15 writes in to let you know about a cool film screening going on Thursday evening:
Join the global campaign to educate and empower girls around the world! Come see Girl Rising, presented at Wesleyan by Half the Sky! It will be screened in Exley 150 at 8PM on May 2nd.
Check out the phenomenal trailer here.
10X10 is a global campaign to educate and empower girls. At the center of the campaign is a feature film, Girl Rising. The film, by Academy Award nominated director Richard Robbins, features performances from Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Selena Gomez, Salma Hayek, Alicia Keys and others. This is a beautiful and important film that tells the stories of 9 remarkable girls from around the world and their remarkable journeys to overcome all odds and acquire an education. The film carries a powerful message: if we educate girls, we can change the future of some 66 million girls around the world who today only dream of going to school. Together, we can create powerful change. I hope you’ll join this movement with us!
Date: Thursday, May 2nd
Time: 8:00 PM
Location: Exley 150
Facebook: Is here
Back by Popular Demand: Etgar Keret Presents Jellyfish
Last here in 2011, award-winning filmmaker and writer Etgar Keret is back— this time to speak about his 2008 film, Jellyfish. Emily Brown ’12, coordinator for special events and intern for the Center for Film Studies, gives us the details:
This film, directed by the husband-and-wife team of Etgar Keret and
Shira Geffen, tells the story of three women in Israel whose lives
intersect in increasingly profound ways. The film, which won the
Camera d’Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, will be followed by a
Q&A with Keret.This event is co-sponsored by the Jewish and Israeli Studies
department and the Film Studies department.
Date: Tuesday, April 23rd
Time: 8:00-10:00 PM
Place: Center for Film Studies
Cost: Free
United States of ALEC Film Screening
A solid double bill, coming at you from Alicia Gansley ’15:
Wesleyan Democracy Matters is teaming up with Common Cause CT for a film and lecture with Common Cause CT senior organizer, Kim Hynes.
Join us for a screening of The United States of ALEC, a documentary narrated by Bill Moyers that examines how corporations and state legislators are colluding to write laws and remake America. Common Cause Connecticut senior organizer Kim Hynes will be introducing the film. Learn about how corporations are affecting the American political process on even the state level!
Date: Monday, April 15th, 2013
Time: 7:00 PM
Place: Judd 113
Cost: Free!
Audition for Clinger
Michael Steves ’13 writes:
Come audition for Clinger, an independent horror-comedy feature film shooting this summer, directed by Michael Steves ’13 and crewed almost entirely by Wesleyan students. The film shoots in Houston, Texas from July 20th until August 22nd (though most actors will not have to be there for the entire time).
Several Wesleyan students and actors out of LA have already joined the cast, but we still have a few key parts left to cast. Actors will not be paid upfront, but all food and housing is covered while you are in Houston and back end pay will be offered if the film makes a profit.
The premise: A high school girl has to fight for her life when her overly affectionate boyfriend dies in an embarrassing accident and returns as a ghost, determined to kill her so that they can live together forever in the afterlife.
- WHEN?: Tomorrow (Saturday) from 2-5pm; Sunday from 3-6pm
- WHERE?: Usdan 108 (Saturday) and Usdan 136 (Sunday)
- QUESTIONS?: msteves(at)wesleyan(dot)edu
“Words Versus Actions”: Billinkoff ’14 Films Documentary about Public Safety Controversies
As a final project for his Digital Filmmaking class, slam poet regular and Wesleying contributor Solomon Billinkoff ’14 has made a brief documentary about Public Safety. The twelve-minute short focuses on a series of events in the fall of 2012 (many of which led to the recent decision not to include racial descriptors in safety alerts). As Billinkoff explains in his voice-over:
I never had a plan for this movie. All I knew was that I wanted to make a documentary about Public Safety. After having gotten approval from the organization, my first instinct was to humanize P-Safe, as it is an institution that is generally maligned by the student body. A wave of on-campus assaults had just occurred within a single week, and I was interested to discover what P-Safe was doing to handle the situation and protect students. But the alerts P-Safe had sent out described the suspects as “African-American” and “male,” and unbeknownst to me at the time, these email alerts were met with a slew of racial hatred on Wesleyan’s Anonymous Confession Board. It was then revealed that a P-Safe officer had allegedly assaulted a black Wesleyan student. A week later, a forum on student diversity and equality was held in Wesleyan’s Beckham Hall.
These conflicts and contradictions form the basis of Billinkoff’s film, which largely speaks for itself. It’s only twelve minutes, so watch it after the jump.
Filmmaker Sun-Higginson ’10 Tackles Sexism in the Gaming Industry
From Shannon Sun-Higginson ’10, a message to all the sexist gamers out there: GTFO.
image via fatuglyorslutty.com
Sun-Higginson, a filmmaker living in NYC, is currently producing a documentary by that very name. Featuring interviews with gamers, bloggers, scholars, developers, and others involved in the field, “GTFO” aims to expose the harassment of women involved in the gaming industry. To raise money and support for the film’s production, Sun-Higginson has launched a Kickstarter page that will be up through May 10.
Sexual harassment is a rampant problem in the gaming world – one that’s been gaining attention in the news lately. There has been some pretty impressive backlash online against this sexism, but Sun-Higginson hopes her film will call even more attention to the problem and ultimately spark some change.
Watch the trailer after the jump:
German Ladies Make Movies: Run Lola Run
Emily Brown ’12 keeps it short:
Leo Lensing, Professor of German Studies & Film Studies will introduce the film and answer questions.
Date: Tuesday, April 2
Time: 6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Place: Center for Film Studies
Cost: Free
Film Series Celebrates Spring with Feel-Good Hits ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ ‘Psycho, ‘The Master’
Okay, fine, they’re also closing off the year with The Breakfast Club.
Get ready to enjoy the final Film Series calendar of the year with some fava beans and a nice Chianti, because Hannibal Lector is coming to the Goldsmith. Silence of the Lambs—the first film I ever saw in a movie theater (I was five months old) and at Wesleyan, maybe the last—will be joined by feel-good blockbusters like so-obvious-you-can’t-believe-you-haven’t-seen-it-at-the-Goldsmith Psycho (just in time for Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock biopic, starring Dr. Lector Anthony Hopkins himself) and recently acclaimed Paul Thomas Anderson Scientology meditation The Master, which stars usual suspect Philip Seymour Hoffman and up-and-coming rapper Joaquin Phoenix. These films are playing on Friday, April 19; Wednesday, April 3; and Wednesday, March 27, respectively.
As far as serious crowd-pleasers go, you’ll probably be excited to note that the Film Board is closing off the academic year (just about) with John Hughes classic The Breakfast Club, because a raging ”Don’t You Forget About Me” singalong in the Goldsmith is precisely what this campus needs. (Prepare by reviewing Molly Ringwald’s Reddit AMA!) (Maybe next year you’ll be blessed with Sixteen Candles.) Speaking of the ’80s, they have also finally honored Goatmilk’s insistent requests for The Land Before Time, which is scheduled to light up your weekend with dinosaurs next Friday night. Also on the agenda is something calling itself “An Evening of Experimental Cinema,” because of course there is.
Thesis Filmmakers Need Your Help Affording Quvenzhané Wallis’ Salary
The official theme for their capital campaign is “#THESISWHY.”
Tired of capital campaigns yet? Too bad. Making movies is expensive, and #thisiswhy thesis filmmakers Gus Vita ’13 and Dema Paxton Fofang ’13 (otherwise known as The Artist Formerly Known as Bamenda) are asking for your help in the form of a Kickstarter and an IndieGogo campaign, respectively. Vita’s asking for $3,000 and Fofang’s asking for $1,000, which comes to $4,000 total between the two of them, which still only amounts to .016% of the budget of Michael Bay ’86’s next $25 million opus (and that’s not counting the extra millions for advertising), so throw them a bone, will you? (At any rate, both of them have raised substantial funds towards their goals as of this posting—but they need more.)
You’d be right in assuming that filming is complete for both movies, so why raise money now? As Fofang explains it, “both of our projects were shot on 16mm, and the post-production process for that format is quite expensive. I’m currently spending long hours each day editing the film on a Steenbeck, and prepping for the final stages of post-production.” A cursory glance at Fofang’s own fundraising campaign reveals in detail where the money’s going: hiring a negative cutter to assemble the final cut, hiring a professional sound mixer to optimize the soundtrack, answer prints, color correction, telecine, festival distribution fees.
Wait, festival distribution fees? For real? If you donate, that means you can take credit when one of these films becomes the next Beasts of the Southern Wild and shows up on Oprah and gets problematized by The New Republic or whatever. Click past the jump for a bit more information on both films.