VCUArts Cinema will premiere eight shorts films Tuesday, Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. at the Grace Street Theater, marking the department’s first public screening.
Five of the films are a result of an eight week, 15-credit required cinema course students took over the summer. The students not only shot the films but edited and produced them.
The films made this summer were “Steam Heat,” by Claire Wilson, “Flicker” by Sophie Minnerly, “Jackson and Joseph” by Nate King, “Laboring Lament” by Andrea Murphy and “Hair Grows in Funny Places” by Michael Leonberger.
“This summer was truly a collaboration on several levels,” Wilson said. “It takes multiple people and talents to make a film and every individual effort was for the creative whole.”
Other films that will screen Tuesday and weren’t part of the required cinema course are “The Persistence of Everything,” by undergraduate grant winner and cinema student Michael Bryant, “Molly,” by cinema student Steven Vagias and “River City Blue,” made by a group of freshmen cinema students last fall.
Although the students began the course last May, the process started in March. Cinema students submitted a script to Rob Tregenza, head of the cinema department, who selected 12 scripts. He then passed the scripts along to Richard Toscan, dean of the school of arts, who selected tthe five that will be screened next Tuesday. Tregenza has high hopes as to what the screening will do for the future of the cinema department.
“I think this will be the beginning of one of the most powerful cinema programs on the East Coast,” Tregenza said. “Powerful in the sense that we engage contemporary issues with cinematic story telling at a level of production much higher than any other university in Virginia.”