Story by Heather Ah San & Kristi Mueller
Illustrations by Bailey Meyers
In a sea of MacBooks and aluminum water bottles, it looked like any other University of Oregon classroom, except for the current topic of discussion: what to do with 200 LED lights. Discussion about the lights illustrated the students important attention to detail, almost to the point of perfection. It was clear that they weren’t just talking about your standard UO event.
The classroom quickly turned to a professional atmosphere that served as the birthing of Cinema Pacific 2010: Focus Korea.
These weekly meetings were a staple along the journey of creating this year’s film festival, and correlated with UO Professor Richard Herskowitz’s class, Special Problems in Student Film Management. The class was made up of a variety of majors, with the majority enrolled in the Arts and Administration Program.
“It all started when Richard came and talked to another class I was taking,” says graduate student Tomas Valladares. “I could tell that he was passionate about what he was talking about and he seemed to have a knowledge of what a film festival is supposed to be like. “
For other students in the class, it was for another reason.
“I really wanted to have the experience working with Richard and with the festival,” graduate student Alyssa Fischer says. “I have more of an events background, so I wanted to have the experience.”
What Fischer refers to is the class project of planning a film festival. Students in Professor Herskowitz’s class participated in a variety of different activities including planning the Adrenaline Film Project. Made up of filmmakers from around the country, the event challenges competitors to create, write, direct, and edit a film in seventy-two hours.
“Planning this event has been experimental,” graduate student Arielle Sherman says. “Everything is a test and everything is as it goes.”
Students remained committed to working hard at putting this festival together, only to find the greatest result.
“I was so impressed with the people’s reaction,” Valladares says. “It was amazing how many people showed up, especially to Adrenaline.”
The Cinema Studies department was especially excited about Cinema Pacific and specifically the opportunity for its students to participate in the Adrenaline Film Project. In this year’s festival, six of out the tweleve competitive groups at Adrenaline came from the Cinema Studies major.
Cinema Studies major and Adrenaline Film Project coordinator Stephanie Strahan said that the Cinema Studies department plans to renew the film festival next April. The focus of next year’s festival will be China with, Valladeres says, a specific goal of integrating the festival with Eugene’s large Chinese presence.
“There are a lot of organizations that we can partner with for next year,” he says. “We want to get a lot more community involvement.”
Coordinators are still looking into community and university organizations they hope to work with such as the Confucius Institute at the UO, whose goal is to promote educational ties with China, language training, and intercultural understanding.
The coordinators also hope to both bring attention to Oregon’s film industry, which, Strahan says, does not get much attention compared to California and Hollywood.
“We want Eugene to be a cultural, tourism destination, with a more well known film industry,” she says.
Special Problems in Student Film Management will likely be offered again winter and spring 2011, but because the festival starts in April, the course may also be added in Fall 2010.
As these students transition into the last few weeks of school and life after Cinema Pacific they are optimistic about the future.
“Since I’ve got one year left, I’ll definitely be involved again,” Sherman says.
Read Ethos’ coverage of the Adrenaline Film Festival and other local film festival, DisOrient.
