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Student film night debuts

by Michelle Chang

Skateboards, clowns, Pavarotti, vegans and Tori Amos. What do all of these things have in common? They all managed to be a part of Student Film Night last Wednesday. Needless to say, the evening was not short on variety. With the work of 14 directors represented, the audience came on board for an adventurous and unpredictable ride.

The broad nature of the event made for a very general audience, some coming out of sheer curiosity and others having personal ties to the films. Nontheless, Kettering was impressively full for the majority of the evening despite the insufferably hot conditions. Response to all the films and videos was very supportive on the whole.

The pieces presented covered a wide range of topics and styles. Some were easy crowd pleasers and others perhaps did not communicate so well with the audience, but each individual work had its own strengths and weaknesses.

The evening opened with junior David Hartman's Whoroscope.  Hard to describe with words except that it seemed like something out of a Bergman dream sequence (must have been the ticking clock). Directors first-year Chris Andrew and junior Frank Ruy also followed this line of more experimental, artistic endeavors. Andrew's piece, Stop time,  combined several images to a long (too long) jazz piece and made use of some interesting lighting techiniques and focus play.

Ruy's Cyber Kitsch,  a commentary on the detrimental effects of media technology, consisted of a very tightly assembled montage of film clips. One of the best parts contained cuts from the Clockwork Orange  aversion therapy scene spliced together with shots of Geraldo and Kurt Loder doing MTV News. Ruy effectively used the media to critique itself, even literally turning the camera onto the screen itself. This added a bonus effect, creating that cool, cyberspacey effect.

On the comic side of things, first-year Kevin McShane gave us his Tarantino parody, Suburban Dogs  which was good for laughs but was less of a parody and more of a slightly altered simulation. First-year Sonia Satinsky's Vegan Holocaust,  a very Oberlin-appropriate spoof of savage vegans, had the healthy combination of funny actors (a pimp daddy character never fails) and a unique idea that translated well to the screen and the audience.

The night had a more serious turn with more issue-oriented works. Junior Ellyn Stewart's Sticks and Stones  offered an insightful collection of candid interviews about the salience of words in women's lives, although it ran too long for a "preview." Junior Jenny Sargent's Pluralistic Ignorance  was a powerful exploration of the highly constructed images of ideal feminine beauty that women have to contend with everyday. Her montage involved very clever juxtapositions of images and implications. Sophomore Claudia VonVacano showed several of her works, touching on Latino issues as well as a commentary on the dominance of computers. The pieces were decent but seemed out of place in the context of the evening.

First-year Manuel Rodriguez's Fun,  a video on skateboarding, was well done, near the level of your typical, profesionally done skateboarding video. The audience was entranced by the smooth flow of the camera work, until jolted by that awful puking scene. And, as usual, the falls were as fascinating as the stunts.

Animation was the dominating force of the evening and also provided for some of the most impressive showings of the night. Junior Seth Scoville's The Fear  gave us cool clay monsters in a relatively tight, stop motion piece about a nightmare. Senior Amy Strada's 12 minute film was equally bizarre and full of creatures. Junior Jesse McLean's Lunar Circus  was a charming short with a very simple and visually original style. senior Thomas Unfried's Leave Me Alone  (or "Grimace gets eaten by his own tapeworm") was a fine achievement in animation despite its stomach turning quality.

Junior Ben Zelkowicz's Always  got the best reception of the evening, maybe deservedly so. After a meticulous production process, the finished product was very smooth and of high quality. It was also just too cute for anyone to resist. I guess short and sweet always wins in the end.

At nearly four hours, the evening ran on far too long. I was probably one of a handful who managed to stay put from first piece to last. Unfortunately, this caused some of the worthy pieces in the end to get shafted. Some more discretion was probably needed to decide what was appropriate and time efficient for the event. It was also unsettling to have people constantly walking in and out in the middle of pieces - a little theater etiquette, please! - especially with nervous directors right there in the room.

Despite the drawbacks, the evening was an overall success, in terms of both input and response. The efforts on the part of OFS, IFS and all the contributing directors is to be commended for a job well done.


Oberlin

Copyright © 1997, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 125, Number 22; April 25, 1997

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