This year’s Princeton Student Film Festival*, held in the public library’s community room, reached new levels of diversity. Docs, experimental shorts, and films in the middle ground shared the same screen, and viewers were treated to two nights of youthful creativity. Here we provide coverage of some of our favorite submissions. *Currently in it’s13th year, the Princeton Student Film Festival is a venue open to submissions from young filmmakers aged 14-25, curated by the Princeton Public Library.
Princeton Student Film Festival 2016 By Everett Shen
Day One One Step at a Time | Documentary | 4 minutes, 10 seconds | Ian McQueen The first doc scheduled for the night highlighted a recurring theme in this year’s festival. By documenting his grandparents belatedly-developed marathon running career, New Jersey high-schooler Ian McQueen paints a portrait of familial relationships, and the forces that help shape them. A self-contained interview with the two elder McQueens takes place in the family living room, and is the main feature of the 4 minutes of runtime. With the two seated closely but comfortably on the same armchair, under a warmly colored backdrop, the scene is visually framed as to generate a sense of cozy commemoration, instead of the traditional focus on investigation and analysis found in documentaries. The well-paced editing, interspersed with old photos and still life, places the center of attention onto the state of being of elderly relationships, rather than historical significance or biographical details.The film boasts an organic audio quality, which highlights moments of musing and bonding, and soft piano music creates a warm ambience throughout. McQueen’s quaint narrative illustrates the joy of persistence, and a life philosophy that celebrates simple and tacit pleasures.
One Step at a Time
Mannequin | Horror | 8 minutes, 51 seconds | Zach McCoy-Davies
Mannequin
Debatably the most polished-looking film of the night (a wide-aspect ratio and shot diversity does wonders), Mannequin is a by-the-numbers horror story, with cloth dummies assuming the position of terror in a high school theater backstage, featuring “Slenderman”-esque dynamics. Despite having inanimate antagonists, there is no lack of fear to be found, as the director skillfully manages changes of tone, and slow-paced build-ups in anxiety, and culminates in a climax more surreal than it is shocking. Credit also goes to the actress portraying the victim, whose unexaggerated reactions are perfect for the deserted setting of the film. Mannequin also just might have been the first film in the selection to use lighting to its advantage, with artificially vivid green lights creating a sense of disorientation and claustrophobia, and moonlight-blue stage lights shining eerily in the film’s most beautiful scene.
Interviews: Susan Conlon— PSFF 2016 Coordinator After the screenings, we met up with the event’s main organizer, to learn about what goes into planning the festival. Here’s what she had to say: 151MM: What goes into planning the festival?
6 /Chiaroscuro
SC: The film festival takes place in the third week of July, and [after that] we pretty much immediately begin accepting entries for the next year.The deadline is June 1st, and that gives people quite a lot of time. Most of the films come in within in the last week or two, or even on the last day. [...]There’s not a whole lot of student festivals out there, so one that’s been around for this long, and has the name Princeton attached to it—I guess that helps. The other thing is that we don’t have an entry fee. [...] The application process is pretty basic. We tell them the requirements: can’t be longer than 20
minutes, age range is 14-25. That captures high school and college students, and we do get thesis films, and we’re also focused all the way through in the sense that we want these films to be vibrant and fun and interesting, and so as we’re selecting films we ask in the application if [the filmmakers] would be likely to come if they’re selected. That does give us an idea of who’s likely to come, because we do like to have the filmmakers here, and having that time for Q&A is good for them.