Northeastern is screaming for a film festival. Or rather, Boston’s colleges need a film festival and Northeastern needs to be part of it. Of course, I realize Northeastern already has film festivals, and other related events. Screenings of films by students who are cinema studies majors took place in afterHOURS as a showcase of the “Boston Modernism” films produced by students in the department. Outside film festivals come to our university when the time is convenient to screen one, maybe two of their films on campus. In October, the Boston Muslim Film Festival screened “Dunia: Kiss Me Not My Eyes” in Dodge Hall.
And we can’t disregard the visits by individual filmmakers and the individual film screenings that are usually hosted by the Communication studies department, along with various interest groups on campus: Hollywood editor David Rosenbloom visited campus in fall 2007; recently there was a screening of Palestinian films at the Museum of Fine Arts that cinema studies majors were able to attend for free; Apple seems to have (or at least have had) a sizeable influence on our campus with its 24-hour “Insomnia Film Festival.”
It is the idea of “Outside Film Festivals” that I will try to elaborate on to show what changes should come about. Last year when I was still a communication studies and cinema studies dual major, I tried to bring a duo called The Silent Clowns to campus. The Silent Clowns are a New York based group consisting of a pianist and a projectionist who regularly travel to colleges and screens silent films with musical accompaniment. I was eventually told by a person in the Cinema Studies program that they did not have enough money to pay them for a show on campus. This is fair enough, and I now realize my naivete in thinking that one tiny department at a massive university would be willing to and have the resources to carry out one student’s idea. But then again, why must this be something that falls in the hands of one department? Why does it need to fall in the hands of one university? There are plenty of other colleges in the area: Massachusetts College of Art and Design is next door, as is the School of the Museum of Fine Arts; Boston University is across the Fens and near Fenway Park. Any of these places could co-host a film festival with Northeastern.
I would personally still love to see a silent film festival, perhaps an entirely student-run film festival showcasing all kinds of films made by students all across Boston. But the film festival, whatever the theme, would be un-affiliated with any corporate interest (Apple), current social significance (Palestinians, Muslims) and it would not tell you how to get a job (David Rosenbloom). The only significance would be to the art of film itself. This is not a narrow context. On the contrary, it would allow for films to be taken on their own terms and for people to watch a film and think for themselves about what it means, without a pretext to guide them. This sort of open-ended, self-used education and participation is what both cinema and college education are about.
-Damon Griffin is a junior
communication studies major
