Celebrating Student Work at The Redstone Film Festival

The 46th annual Redstone Film Festival returns this Friday, a night of student creativity and community that showcases short films produced, directed and written by Boston University student filmmakers in a wide variety of genres. 

Attendees will enjoy screenings of student short films followed by the presentation of awards sponsored by the Sumner Redstone Foundation in the following categories: Best Picture, Documentary, Cinematography, Screenplay, Editing, Sound Design, Production Design, Actor, and Audience Choice. 

Awards are also presented for student-composed screenplays, academic work in the field of film and television studies, and short film by a graduate of Boston University.

Regarded as one of New England’s premiere showcases for student work, The Redstone Film Festivals in the past have featured films later nominated and awarded in subsequent film festivals around the world. 

The festival begins at 7 pm, April 3 at Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue. Tickets are free and available here.

Short Film: Finalists

Lola: When a young man discovers his late uncle was a drag performer, he seeks out the uncle’s former partner, drawing him into the world of drag, while forcing him to confront his own identity, and the legacy of queer resilience.

Writer: Dylan Gozdziewski
Producers: Laura Sessi-Knott and Akaash Khurana
Director: Dylan Gozdziewski
Camera (DP): Lina Barclay
Production Design: Piper Hope
Editor: Erin Mosier
Sound Design: Najah Diaz

Before I Bleed: This film aims to create a cinematic embodiment of PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome), a medical condition caused by hormone changes that many women experience one week before menstruation. Experimenting with special materials and collecting stories from women of different backgrounds, the filmmakers build a mosaic of their nuanced experiences of the same journey – adapting and co-existing with pain that only bleeding can justify.

Producers: Isa Han, Lina Barclay and Najah Diaz
Director: Isa Han
Camera (DP): Lina Barclay
Production Design: Lina Barclay
Editor: Najah Diaz, Lina Barclay
Sound Design: Najah Diaz

Pirate Nights: In a dystopian near future where plastic has begun to erupt from people’s skin, a young woman goes on an awkward date, trying to have a normal night like the ones before the world changed.

Writer: Joaquin Garcia Torres
Producers: Nefeli Koutsouki
Director: Joaquin Garcia Torres
Camera (DP): Claire Kim
Production Design: Amaya Pasto
Editor: Byunghui “Hwi” Hwang
Sound Design: Claire Kim

All I See Is Gray: When a veteran is struck with psychogenic blindness, his wife struggles to hold their fractured family and two distant sons together.

Writer: Ariel Narayan
Producers: Nefeli Koutsouki
Director: Amanda Hess
Camera (DP): James Ninneman
Production Design: Madelyn Irwin
Editor: Johnathan Cohen
Sound Design: Najah Diaz

Closest to the Heart: A sincere third-generation musician, Mr. Ha is not only an accomplished accordion player in the Tachen Song and Dance Troupe, but also a no-nonsense accordion teacher and doting father to his young daughter Anna. His infectious, earnest love for music is reflected in all the people surrounding him in his hometown, the Accordion City. As he dances with strangers in the park, instructs sprouting musicians, and plays duets with his shy but assertive daughter, this film explores Mr. Ha’s passion for his instrument, family, music and life.

Producer: Guo Zhenyu
Director: Lina Barclay
Camera (DP): Lina Barclay
Editor: Lina Barclay

Si Solamente: 17-year-old Esme, faced with fear and uncertainty, must shield her 8-year-old baby brother, Juan, from the truth when humanity takes part in separating her family. 

Writer: Kerlin Campos
Producers: Sofia Gonzalez Irigoyen
Director: Kerlin Campos
Camera (DP): Zaiyue Gui (Lily)
Production Design: Piper Hope
Editor: Wilmer Castro
Sound Design: Vivian Dai

Alumni Short Film: Winner

A Grieving Heart: An immigrant woman examines her past in the wake of her American ex-boyfriend’s death. The film explores how love and loss impact the ways she confronts her identity, memories, insecurities, and regrets.

Director: Wendy Cong Zhao

Film and Television Department Short Screenplay Awards: FInalists

• Compulsion by Timothy Santora
• Not a Sinner by Angel Vincent
• Please Wait to Be Seated by Rae Ruane
• The Spaces Between Us by Kevin Nguyen 
• Tourist by Samantha Matney
• Us and Them by Isabella Laikin

The Film and Television Studies Award for Innovative Scholarship: Winners

• Maggie Styer, “An ‘Offensive Mechanism’: Queer Murder as Defiance in Hannibal, Yellowjackets, and AMC’s Interview With the Vampire”
• Jiayue “Cathy” Wang, “From Ideological Illusion to Embodied Engagement: Rethinking Apparatus Theory Through Leviathan (2012) and De humani corporis fabrica (2022)”