Broad Street Film Festival hopes present successes will lead to future growth

BY COLIN STAYTON

The collective effort of Covenant and Bryan College, the Broad Street Film Festival boasted a number of original student films shown for the economical price of $3 a ticket. But next year’s return will require that both schools have the resources, funds, and academic backing to produce another set of awardable student films. This is, so far, only true of Bryan.

The festival was a success because it marked the beginnings of integration between the filmmaking of Covenant and Bryan students. If it becomes a tradition, it is possible and certainly desirable that Broad Street will become less about Covenant films versus Bryan films and more about good films versus bad films. As it is, the Broad Street Film Festival revealed a clear incongruity between the two schools’ aesthetic values.

Despite the schmaltzy acoustic guitar, poor sound editing, and self-aware actors, many of the Bryan films had a noble goal in mind, which was, presumably, to frame the average 20-something’s experience according to a moral code. However, they often landed in the realm of “moralizing,” which at best amused us and at worst made us cringe.

“My Brother’s Keeper,” a contrived retelling of Cain and Abel through a modern day fratricidal thriller, left us with a confusing baptism scene and indifference as to what it meant. Most cringe-worthy, perhaps, was “Give Me a Break!”, whose title predicted the audience’s response with uncanny accuracy.

Some notable exceptions included “A Pistol In Hand,” which refrained from moralizing and so saved itself from being too heavy-handed. It also boasted slick production and good pacing, even though the plot made little sense.

The most successful Bryan film was “You Dropped Your Quarter,” which won the award for Best Short Term Narrative. Its director, Colton Davies, clearly understood the film’s limits and worked within them to create a film that satisfied every goal it set out to accomplish.

On Covenant’s end, Asher Warren won Best Foreign Film for his excellent “Der Zaun,” a slice-of-life short set in Berlin in 1989 which proved that a true-to-life story often provides its own gravitas when you simply tell it.

The clear winner of the night, and winner for Best Long Term Narrative, was “Fountain of Youth,” the brainchild of Orson Welles brought to life by Grant Withington, Drew Belz and Isaiah Smallman.

With a crack cast of actors, timely photomontages, and the charisma of narrator Max Belz, “Fountain of Youth” displayed an intuitive knowledge of the cinematic language. Following Welles’ original script also freed the directors from indulgent voiceovers, an unfortunate recurrence in Bryan films.

What most set “Fountain of Youth” apart from the other films was its treatment of the “Christian aesthetic.” Rather than trying to juggle their Christian values with their craft, Withington, Belz and Smallman simply followed in the footsteps of a great filmmaker. They let the quality of the work testify to their convictions instead of squeezing their faith into the cracks of an ill-conceived plot.

Despite having less formal training and fewer resources, Thursday night’s showings left the distinct impression that Covenant outshined Bryan.

The question is where to go from here. As Dr. Foreman wrote in his recent post on the Wittenberg Floor, the film festival “marks another step in our college’s entry into visual, digital culture.” The movie screen is our generation’s canvas. As the premiere artistic medium, both students and the academic powers-that-be ought to begin intentionally investing in student filmmaking.

According to Professor Hallstrom, they are. In her own Wittenberg Floor post, Dr. Hallstrom noted that considerable effort has been poured into bringing folks like casting director Michael Stark and filmmaker Zena Dell Lowe to campus to teach screen acting and writing.

“The newly formed department of Theatre & Film Studies is currently looking at ways to develop a film concentration or minor as well,” Hallstrom wrote, “But all that takes money and personnel, neither of which is in overabundant supply these days.”

As it stands, Covenant has a roughly equal number of Covenant theatre graduates working in professional film and broadcast media as are involved in professional theatre. Dr. Hallstrom encourages students who are interested in film to take theatre classes while a film concentration is still in the works.

Bolstering film studies opportunities at Covenant may not seem viable in the current economic pinch, but the Broad Street Film Festival simply isn’t a sustainable endeavor for Covenant if the films are purely extracurricular. “Fountain of Youth” required over a week of full-time shooting and months in post-production—none of it for academic credit.

If Covenant’s young filmmakers are to expand and refine their output in the future, their efforts will need school funding and faculty training. If teachers and students can share the same resolve, Covenant’s foray into visual media is imminent.