By KAYLA DEMICCO
Opinions Editor
The 7th annual student film festival, 15 Minutes Max, took place on Saturday Oct. 13 at the Carondelet Symposium in the Thelma P. Lally School of Education building and was hosted by Jackson Murphy for the third consecutive year. The festival hasn’t been held on campus since 2013, when its founder Silvia Meijía, Ph.D stepped down as the director.
In 2014, Liz Richards was appointed as the new director, and she made the decision to make changes to the festival in order increase viewership. When moving to the Madison Theater, the festival committee partnered up with 2COMMUNIQUÉ and opened it up beyond students of Saint Rose.
“The Carondelet Symposium is a great spot for us. I liked it here very much and hope to return here next year,” said Murphy.
For this year’s festival, the committee received over 100 submissions and only 11 student films made it through to be shown.
“This has been the most submissions since ever,” said Richards.
The 11 films to make it to the festival were “Silence” by Camille Dobbs, “Aokigahara” by Ben Mojica, “Kill Your Demons” by Destiny Pezzolla, “(F)Empowered” by Lyndsy Bystroff, Lydia Nightingale, Jonathan Peters, and Dustin Connors, “A Different Kind of Crazy Now” by Thomas McWalters, “Black in Blue” by Sindi Mafico, “Wake Up” by Maura Polden, “Solnin” by Maddie King, “Pig or Pork” by Uyen Uong, “Beefcake” by Ejaniia Clayton, and “Libertine” by Luke Dyer, Kevin Jordan, and AJ Hubbard.
The Honorable Mention Award was won by “Pig or Pork” by Uyen Uong from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Uong was not present at the festival, therefore a friend of his accepted the award on his behalf.
“Pig or Pork” was a short cartoon with no dialogue about a person who goes about their life with their pet pig. However, they dream about the pig being pork.
The third place award went to “(F)Empowered” by Lyndsy Bystroff, Lydia Nightingale, Jonathan Peters, and Dustin Connors from University at Albany. Bystroff played a huge part in the film as it was her perspective and personal story dealing with the feminist movement. The film touched upon the wrongful sexualization of women’s bodies throughout history and aimed to send a positive message about the female body.
“When we first started writing the film, we went through a lot of changes. We know we wanted to touch upon the feminist movement and female empowerment but we didn’t know exactly which direction to take,” said Peters.
“We’re proud of it,” said Nightingale and Peters.
In second place, was “Solonin” by Maddie King from Skidmore College. King was also not present to accept the award. To accept the award on her behalf was presenter, Jay Walker. The film was set in France and followed the storyline of an old house.
First place award went to “Libertine” by Luke Dyer, Kevin Jordan, and AJ Hubbard from Union College. To make their film come to be, the trio combined their love for horror, science fiction, and comedy. They had the encouragement to make their film from one of their professors, Jim de S’eve.
“Libertine” takes place in a dystopic future in which water scarcity has led the working class to take drastic measures to survive. They have taken to selling their bodies for the water inside in exchange for an eternal “afterlife” in a virtual world created by a monopolistic corporation.
Winning the award for Audience Choice, Camille Dobbs from Albany High School, acted and directed in her own film, “Silence”, that was based on a true story.
“Silence” is a story about a teenage girl who is harassed and stalked by her fellow classmate. When things reach an all time high she tries to seek help, but she’s only silenced in the process.
“The process was very hard but it was very beneficial. I had a very supportive team… I had to make sure that I trusted my team,” said Dobbs.
Even though her film was made in August of last year, before the #MeToo movement came to be, the message behind the story was #MeToo based.
“At the time, there were a lot of different cases happening in the news, and a lot of different stories going around at my high school as well. A lot of stories I heard from my friends where they felt like they were being let down by administration… I used my platform to tell this story that was very important,” said Dobbs.
To describe the turnout of the 7th Annual Student Film Festival, Murphy said, “I love this event – supporting young filmmakers and see new visions on screen. And I think this was the best year yet!”
