Family, friends, and sci-fi thrillers
The 2006 Redstone Film Festival
The 26th annual Redstone Film Festival begins tonight, giving current BU students and recent graduates the opportunity to show their work to media professionals and win cash awards. Six films were selected for screening at the festival; the panel of judges includes Maureen Foley, a filmmaker; Wesley Morris, a film critic for the Boston Globe; and Bo Smith, the Katharine Stone White Head of Film and Video at the Museum of Fine Arts. The festival, sponsored by Sumner Redstone (Hon.’94), CEO of Viacom, begins at 7 p.m., Wednesday, February 15, at the Tsai Performance Center and is free and open to the public.
BU Today spoke to three finalists about their films and the festival experience. Click the links below to listen to the interviews and watch film clips. RealPlayer™ required.
Abandoned, Henry Hughes (COM’06) and Mitchell Sandler (COM’06)
This clip contains scenes of extreme violence.
Former roommates Hughes and Sandler made a film that explores the “homoerotic side of loneliness” in the sci-fi thriller genre, Hughes says, for their undergraduate Film Production class. This is the first film the two have made. “We kind of had fun with what we learned and what we enjoy on film,” Sandler says. “Every lighting scenario we thought would be cool, we tried.”
Click here to listen to the interview (2:29).
The Bowlers, Kevin McCarthy (COM’05)
McCarthy, who received his MFA from the College of Communication last year, was inspired to make a documentary about bocce players in the North End when he realized that the same group of elderly Italian men visited the same court every day until the weather grew too cold. “I thought their community looked pretty interesting,” McCarthy says. “I thought it would be really great to infiltrate and get to know them."
Click here to listen to the interview (2:51).
In the Tradition of My Family, Todd Davis (COM’05)
Davis’ film explores a family’s ritual of giving each boy a gunshot wound when he turns 13. “The tagline I’ve been using is ‘Billy wants a better scar than the one his father gave him,’” says Davis, who earned his MFA in 2005 and worked as the first assistant director on Roller Palace, the sitcom pilot that BU and mtvU are producing.
Click here to listen to the interview (2:49).