This past Tuesday (April 22nd 2008) Bentley hosted its 3rd annual film festival. The Bentley Film festival exclusively featured films that were made and submitted by Bentley students. The genres of the films ranged from short animated films all the way up to social commentary.
While certain films we’re more authentic and more smoothly edited, the overall quality of the student produced films was largely impressive. It was clear that the students put incredible amounts of time and effort into their works. It was refreshing to see students from a business school interested in the art of film making. One of the films submitted to the film festival was a documentary covering the conflict and genocide that has been taking place in Sudan. The film revolved around a Bentley Student whose village was destroyed by Sudanese militants. His story was incredibly moving and inspirational and was the first film in the festival that made me realize this film festival was going to be more than amateur films without any meaning.
The Bentley Film Festival was especially important for me because I actually had a film submitted. My film “The Squirrely Man” was a mock-documentary that was meant to spoof films such as “The Grizzly Man” and television shows such as “The Crocodile Hunter”. The film revolved around an eccentric squirrel researcher who goes mad studying squirrels in the wild. This film took me and my group members a vast amount of time and work and I was very pleased with its reception at the film festival.
My favorite film of the night was a unique suspense thriller called “Fortune”. The film’s plot revolved around a man who orders Chinese food and receives a fortune cookie that contains mysterious assignments that he must accomplish. The film had excellent writing, acting and production values. In my opinion it was head and shoulders above the rest of the films which was an impressive feat.
The night concluded with an award ceremony where various awards were given out. These awards included, Audience Award for Best Film, Best Animation, Best Art Design, Best Cinematography and various others. My favorite film of the night, “Fortune” took home the Audience Award for Best Film, much to my delight. All in all the Bentley Film Festival exceeded my expectations and I will certainly be attending their 4th Annual Film Festival next year.
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3 comments:
Nice review, Kevin. I'm going to forward it to the filmmakers, definitely. It's really great to see young filmmakers see their work on screen. The best part of making film in college, I think are the ways that it can go BEYOND just a school project, have an audience and as you say "Go Beyond" just Bentley campus. You are now a part of the Boston filmmaking scene, both with your film and now by responding to the films with this thoughtful review.
I think it is pretty interesting that you submitted a film of your own. Have you thought about uploading your film for the rest of us to see? and how do you think other people perceived the film festival? What were the types of people that were there?
I think it is remarkable how far Bentley has great strides to come out of nowhere and be very involved in the media arts - film. I also believe that Bentley is unique in this circumstance as to how it can mix both its business-sense alongside with imagination and creativity. This past semester I was taking intro to acting and at first I thought it was going to be a waste of time but the more I was involved, the more I began to appreciate media/theater that is happening around Boston.
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