OFS premieres student films

Wed. night showcases students

On Wed., Apr. 23, Oberlin Film Society (OFS) will host its annual Student Film Night. The evening will showcase several works from the brave students who chose to submit their pieces. Although still growing, the lineup so far is looking diverse and impressive.

College first-year Kevin McShane will be making his public debut with his winter term project, entitled Suburban Dogs, which he describes as a parody of Quentin Tarantino's Resevoir Dogs. It is a 10 minute piece which he edited on computer and transferred to video. Junior David Hartman's Whoroscope is a two minute experimental short video. Though he could not quite explain in words, he promises it will subvert your expectations.

Junior Ben Zelcowicz will be making his second Oberlin showing with a Super 8, stop-motion animation short entitled Always, also a winter term endeavor. The subject of the film is simple but touching and the work itself is quite an achievement in terms of technique. The painstasking process of its creation required shooting seven to eight hours of footage a day for three weeks. "I wanted to work on a piece with no dialogue, so that everything would have to be expressed through the animation," said Zelcowicz.

College sophomore Frank Ruy will be submitting three works to the event. The first, Cyber Kitsch, is a work that was done in conjunction with a book entitled Imagologies by Mark C. Taylor. It is an explosive video montage of media bytes accompanied by excerpts from the text and its aim is to "explore media technology and its effects on society." The second, Tiger Heart, is a 16mm B/W film that Ruy shot on location at Gleason's Boxing Gym in Brooklyn. The three minute piece consists of interviews with people about the famous facility. The same medium was used to create his third piece, On Cause and Effect, which is a short, visual exploration of the title using billiard balls.

Junior Jennifer Sargent will show her 20 minute video, Pluralistic Ignorance, an experimental piece that studies society's images of feminine beauty vs. the diverse reality of what women really look like. She is also submitting an untitled, five minute video that sits in with a group of dancers in order to both pay tribute to and expose some of the myths of the ballet world.

Ellyn Stewart, co-president of OFS and organizer of the event, will contribute her own piece, Sticks and Stones, a 15 minute preview of a longer documentary video project she has planned for next year. According to Stewart, it involves interviews with nine Oberlin women and deals with their experiences with "the power of words to hurt and heal."

All in all, the range of works demonstrate the diverse possibilities that film and video offer as a tool of expression and each brings out different strengths. Many of these pieces also stray from the traditional, linear narrative style of film and video making, showing a real interest in the exploratory side of the mediums.

All the directors seem to agree that this type of event serves as a crucial space for exposure and feedback from peers. "If all you hear is crickets like in the old Warner Brothers cartoons, then you know it's time to go back to the drawing board," said McShane in reference to the necessity of audience response. On a campus where other art forms are getting constant public showings, there is a comparative lack of outlets for student film and video. Nights like this are a way for students to come out of the closet and show their work to people other than their best friends.

With little formal instruction and equipment available at Oberlin, students usually count on their own initiative and operate on an independent basis. The hope is that Student Film Night will not only entertain but also inspire students to follow suit and produce their own works. As Ruy said, "There is a mad interest in film on this campus, but production-wise we're really lacking." Perhaps, as excitement over student efforts increases year after year, film and video will begin to flourish as a viable art form.

Student Film Night is Wed., Apr. 23, 8 p.m. at Kettering . Admission is free.