As the 2011 film festival circuit gets into full swing, UCF students and faculty members are generating buzz with their upcoming screenings.
UCF Film Associate Professor Christopher Harris’ new experimental film “28.IV.81 Descending Figures” is slated for its premiere Saturday, March 26, at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the longest-running independent and experimental film festival in North America.
Shot in July, “Descending Figures” is an improvised double projection film that simultaneously projects two different performances of the “Behold the Lamb – Passion Drama” performed at the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando.
Harris’ film also will screen at Experiments in Cinema v 6.3, an annual celebration of international cinematic experimentation in Albuquerque, N.M., on Sunday, April 17.
Visiting Lecturer Andrew Gay, an alumnus of UCF’s MFA graduate program in Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema, will premiere his feature film, “A Beautiful Belly,” at this year’s local Florida Film Festival.
Gay’s film follows a young couple coping with an unplanned pregnancy and hasty marriage. Completed with a budget of about $25,000, the film was primarily financed through social media crowd sourcing and the ENZIAN/UCF FILM Graduate Production Fund, a unique partnership between the local non-profittheater and the university.
The screening will take place at 4 p.m. Saturday, April 16, at the Enzian Theater in Maitland. A meet-and-greet with the director, cast and crew will follow.
Undergraduate student Edgar Jorge also will screen his film, “A Coincidence of Sorts” at the Florida Film Festival. The film won the annual Brouhaha Short Film Festival at the Enzian this year, and it will screen aspart of the Florida Shorts program at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, April 16, at the Enzian.
UCF Film alumnus Brendon Kingsbury will showcase his film “One Over Wanderlust” at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. “One Over Wanderlust” was Kingsbury’s Honors in the Major thesis while at UCF.
The experimental film explores the relationship between the past and present, and it will compete against more than 40 other narrative short films at the festival, which runs from April 20 to May 1.
Since 1990, UCF Film has been dedicated to the development and inspiration of filmmakers and students of film. The program is grounded in an understanding for and appreciation of the place of story in film, and its curriculum addresses all film genres and types, from the traditional to the experimental and the commercial to the highly personal.
For more information on UCF Film, visit http://film.ucf.edu. For more news and links to UCF Films, go to http://ucffilm.blogspot.com.