SMC Film Club Takes Over CMD for Annual Film Festival
The Santa Monica College (SMC) Film Club members, friends, and family blended together in a pizza-eating, film-loving crowd outside the Center for Media and Design (CMD) campus this past Thursday night. At 7 p.m., the CMD quad turned into a box office lobby for the SMC Film Festival with an auditorium awaiting the audience inside.
As the hosts of the event, Film Club presented a total of nine original productions of both its members and Film 33 students. As the crowd watched the films one by one, Professor Kanin and Professor Flood judged the films for the later presented awards. Film Club has long hosted the SMC Film Festival, but now sees an “all-time high” membership this year with over 150 members, according to club president Carlos Flores Jr.
“I love the fact that this festival is growing each semester,” said Flores. “Professor Kanin told me, ‘You’ve set the bar so high for this club. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the club this successful.’ This wouldn’t have happened without my board, they worked so hard in making this semester the best semester for film club.”
Unlike the rooms on SMC’s main campus, the CMD auditorium mimicked a movie theater: extra rows of seats, cascading lights lining the side stairs, and purple curtains revealing the big screen. Film Club member Ariel Hyman’s production “Perspective” kicked off the festival -- and later won “Best Picture” of the night.
“To be the only woman screening a film that night, and then to win best picture, it was a truly empowering experience,” said Hyman. “It made me think of what else could be possible for me and directors like me in the future.”
“Perspective” opened with a man silencing his morning alarm, screaming into his pillow, and going on to work at a dead-end job, just to do it all again the next day. A mysterious pair of glasses makes his reality look like what he desires most", although his world remained the same. “Perspective” ended with the main character getting punched, followed by the crowd erupted in laughter and applause.
Max Edidin’s “Paralysis” screened after, later winning the award for “Best Directing.” With two characters acting as manifestations of main character Brooke’s inner thoughts, the film follows her through a creative block after the death of her grandmother.
“Paralysis is loosely based on my own life,” said Edinin. “My intentions were to create a character that people could relate to, a character that was human or ‘practically perfect.’”
Mateo Nikolav’s “Unbound” shortly followed, winning both “Best Editing” and “Best Cinematography.” The iPhone-shot black and white film documents the death of a father in the stages of grief, sharing the story with little dialogue. “Unbound” preceded Barry Law and Nina Guo’s “Reiko”, which won “Best Screenplay/”
The night ended with the comedic horror film “Wiped,” made by Chok Suwanavisootr. A Rated-M opening scene sent the audience into roars of laughter, as the plot unveiled the film’s antagonist: a maniacal roll of toilet paper come alive. The short film, filled with toilet jokes, turns a college student with food poisoning into a possessed toilet paper-monster, as her friends attempt to save her while high on drugs.
“We shot [Wiped] during the summertime where our location is almost 90-degrees inside with no aircon-- the owner fainted a week in in her house prior to the shoot,” told Suwanavisootr. “My intention for this film is pretty much to create something that the audience can laugh, groan, and cringe at the same. I was really happy to see those reactions to actually turned out like I expected.”
As Flores designated trophies to each of the winning filmmakers, each of them expressed gratitude for their cast and crew. Many of the filmmakers created their films without the help of professors, but their peers and friends. Hyman, the Film Club’s future president, elaborated on the club’s community.
“Everyone in the club gets to come together and support each other… You get to see people’s creative styles and tastes come out,” said Hyman. “Most of [the crew] I had never met before the film club, but soon the crew felt more like a family than a club project.”