The upcoming first annual Ivy Film Festival to be held at Brown University on Dec. 1 hopes to celebrate and expose students' films by gathering young filmmakers to screen and judge each other's submissions.
Jethro Rothe-Kushel '03, an avid filmmaker since he was nine years old, made arrangements for Dartmouth's participation in the conference. The festival, in its first year, will be held at Brown, but the plan is to bring it to all of the schools in the future.
To solicit judges for the event, organizers such as Rothe-Kushel and students from other Ivies placed calls to celebrity actors, directors, producers, and screenwriters this past summer.
The panel includes producer Oliver Stone, writer and director James Toback, producer Barbara Boyle and director Tim Blake Nelson, who is also a Brown graduate.
Of the 130 student films submitted, 10 hours of footage were chosen for screening. The judges will select the best film in the feature, short subject, documentary and animation categories, and these winning films will be shown on IFILM.com. Awards for best screenwriting, direction and cinematography will also be given out.
Rothe-Kushel's most recent film project, a documentary on homelessness, which he recently completed after two years of work, will be shown to audiences at the festival.
Promotional videos and a four-episode series called "Kiss and Tell," which will premiere this winter on DTV, are among his other works. Around a dozen Dartmouth students also submitted films, and a few were accepted into the festival.
"Film is a powerful and creative tool, and I was very interested in creating a vibrant, creative and supportive environment for fellow student filmmakers here at Dartmouth and in helping form a filmmaking community together with other colleges," Rothe-Kushel told The Dartmouth.
