Hoping to send its final products to the Ivy Film Festival in April, the Stories Growing Films production group has been producing short films each term since last summer. The Ivy Film Festival, the largest student-run film festival in the world, offers a venue for student writers, directors and filmmakers to exhibit work, and Dartmouth students are seizing the opportunity.
Hugh Sagona ’15, the president of Stories Growing Films, said he is excited about an upcoming film he’s directing, tentatively called “Million Dollar Crazy,” which will be finished by the end of spring.
“[It’s a] contemporary noir heist film, and it’s about a guy coming back into town and trying to get the old group together,” he said. “A kind of stereotypical heist story with a little bit of a twist that you find out at the end, which I like.”
“Method Acting,” a film written by Marquis Austin ’16 and directed by Devon Koch ’16, is a mockumentary about a group of high school students making a film for an overzealous method actor. Another project, a screenplay Austin is developing, explores the relationship between a 15-year-old teenager and his reckless sister, Austin said. If either is ready in time, Austin said he hopes to submit to the festival.
“[I have] known about Ivy Film Festival for a while,” he said. “It’s by students for students and attracts a lot of attention and impressive industry figures.”
The festival invites prominent industry figures to speak and interact with the student filmmakers, and past attendees have included Aaron Sorkin, Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Wes Craven, Adrien Brody and Julia Stiles. Natalia Maymi, one of the festival’s executive directors and a Brown University senior, said that it is too soon to know who this year’s keynote speaker will be.
“We are trying to incorporate as many speakers as we can but have more niche specialties in the industry,” she said. “We think that this exposure is really valuable to our visiting filmmakers who came around not only to see their films screened but to network and establish connections with these industry figures.”
The festival will publicize the event to ensure that each student film has a full screening, Maymi said.
The first Ivy Film Festival, held in December 2001, mostly involved Ivy League students. The event quickly expanded beyond the Ivy League, Maymi said, to include submissions from all undergraduates. The festival has a large student staff, and different departments cover various aspects of the filmmaking process and industry.
“[The festival] also has screenings all throughout the school year, not just during the festival,” she said. “There is a lot of reaching out to different distribution and production companies, as well as reaching out to industry figures like directors and screenwriters.”
Last year, organizers received 300 submissions, with 20 finalists chosen, Maymi said. So far, 220 films have been submitted this year. Student filmmakers selected as finalists are given a framed plaque and monetary prizes.
Students who have submitted films to the festival have gone on to achieve further success, including former finalist Anahita Ghazvinizadeh. “Needle,” a film Ghazvinizadeh wrote, was screened at the festival and later won an award at the Cannes Film Festival.
The Ivy Film Festival will be held at Brown University from April 14 through April 20. The deadline for film and screenplay submissions is March 1.
