{"id":35670,"date":"2023-03-02T16:46:04","date_gmt":"2023-03-02T21:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/?post_type=bu-article&p=35670"},"modified":"2023-03-06T16:08:14","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T21:08:14","slug":"film-for-thought","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/articles\/film-for-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Film for Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the opening scene of Adrien Callahan\u2019s short film Ken<\/em><\/a>, a young girl sits in her living room and plays with Barbie dolls. In the background, her mother folds laundry while a psychology talk show called Dr. Bill<\/em> plays on the TV. When the talk show interviewee, a young transgender man, begins discussing his transition\u2014\u201cI think the moment I knew for sure is when I cut my hair short\u201d\u2014the girl becomes intrigued. Her mother notices and promptly shuts off the TV. \u201cIt\u2019s adult stuff,\u201d she tells her daughter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Callahan (\u201923), who is trans, directed the film for the 2022 section of the course Creating the Social Purpose Short, taught by award-winning independent writer, director and producer Marni Zelnick. The class brings together graduate and undergraduate students to produce short films\u2014 around five to ten minutes long\u2014that address society\u2019s most pressing issues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The class, offered each spring beginning in 2022, develops four films written by MFA screenwriting students, such as Callahan. The graduate writer\/directors apply to the class with scripts they developed in another course, Writing the Narrative Short, while undergraduate and graduate students who did not take the writing class are assigned to their production teams\u2014as producers, cinematographers, editors, sound designers, assistant directors or production designers\u2014to create films worthy of festival submission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is an unusual class in that it\u2019s a mix of grads and undergrads who are all working on a single production,\u201d says Zelnick \u201cI think having that mix of age groups and perspectives is helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zelnick, a member of the screenwriting faculty, coteaches the class with a member of the production faculty. In 2022, she joined forces with Jan Egleson, an associate professor of film and television. \u201cSo, the class is not only a collaboration between graduate students and undergrads, but it\u2019s also a collaboration between two different tracks in the film and television department.\u201d This semester, her coteacher is Gustavo Rosa, an assistant professor of film and television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want students to think more deeply about what they\u2019re writing about, and also\u2014in an age where we\u2019re looking at a very polarized country and communication is such a struggle between different groups\u2014to think about the role that they can play in offering people another avenue to experience somebody else\u2019s life, to experience empathy, to connect with a story that maybe isn\u2019t their own experience,\u201d says Zelnick, who wrote and directed the 2014 film Druid Peak<\/em>, starring Andrew Wilson and Spencer Treat Clark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Filmmaking Made Personal<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Callahan, who produced his film as part of the 2022 class, chose to depict a young child struggling with her gender identity. The film\u2019s second scene\u2014the young girl at a hair salon with her mother\u2014echoes the moment the man on Dr. Bill<\/em> discussed: When she asks to cut her long blonde locks short, her mother intervenes and asks for a trim and a bow instead. In bed that night, she stares at her Ken doll with his short blonde coif. She then gets out of bed and heads to the bathroom with a Barbie and Ken doll and a pair of scissors in tow, and promptly begins snipping Barbie\u2019s hair to match Ken\u2019s. Then she begins chopping her own hair short.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe great challenge for these students is to try to\u2026 highlight a very important issue that people want to or need to know more about, or that represents a group who doesn\u2019t have a full voice yet, and then tie that with great casting, story structure and cinematography,\u201d Zelnick says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each film team receives a $1500 grant to produce their film. If they need additional funding, they are allowed to crowdfund. \u201cWe don’t have a limit on what their budgets can be, but most of the films have been microbudget films. A couple of them used only the grant.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to Callahan\u2019s Ken<\/em>, the other films in the Spring 2022 class touched on an array of societal issues. Nina Barresi wrote and directed Lock Jaw<\/em>, which follows a woman who is struggling with her weight and takes part in a medical study in which participants\u2019 jaws are locked shut, so they cannot eat solid food. \u201cThe film uses this body horror genre to talk about the pressure on women to lose weight and the extreme measures that are forced upon them to do so,\u201d says Zelnick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Araceli Sanchez\u2019s (\u201923) Click to Be Saved<\/em> <\/em>tackles the effects of social media and the dangers online scams pose to young people in crisis. In it, a depressed and disconnected college student named Jenna sees a pop-up message on her computer saying, \u201cClick to be saved.\u201d When she clicks it, she is connected with Kelly, a representative from a mysterious company who has knowledge of a lot of Jenna\u2019s personal data. While Kelly seems friendly and well-intentioned at first, her more predatory nature soon comes to light. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want students to think more deeply about what they\u2019re writing about\u2026 to think about the role that they can play in offering people another avenue to experience somebody else\u2019s life, to experience empathy, to connect with a story that maybe isn\u2019t their own experience.<\/p>Marni Zelnick<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Brian Thompson\u2019s Where To<\/em> addresses the alienation veterans feel when they return from combat. The film\u2019s protagonist is a vet and a rideshare driver in Washington, D.C., who faces a lack of connection with, and at times disrespect from, his passengers. The driver also listens to news reports about the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan while thinking about his own experience in the war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zelnick says that many of the students have strong personal ties to the films they create. \u201cThat\u2019s what makes them so special.\u201d Thompson (\u201923) is a veteran. Barresi (\u201923) has written about weight, fatphobia and diet culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Bigger Focus on Social Impact<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Spring 2023 class is producing films that deal with an equally diverse range of subjects, including the impact of racism on a young Black man who aspires to be a fashion designer; a young woman\u2019s struggles with body image and disordered eating; how a young person in the process of transitioning is grappling with how he is seen in queer spaces and by the queer community; and the ways a young Chinese immigrant boy feels pressure to succeed while his family is struggling financially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zelnick is in the process of developing an MFA production program with a focus on social impact filmmaking. The Creating the Social Purpose Short class grew out of creating this new program. \u201cIt began as a kind of test run for what our graduate program might look like,\u201d she says. As part of that larger project, Writing the Narrative Short will become Writing the Social Purpose Short in 2024. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zelnick hopes the class expands opportunities for underrepresented voices. \u201cOur students are writing about subject matter that we don\u2019t see enough of in film. I want them to get this directing experience so that we\u2019re sending out more creators who are representative of perspectives that we wish we had more of in the industry.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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