This is the mission of the 2008 Humboldt Film Festival Staff and, according to the event’s co-directors, it’s adding up to be one of the best festivals in memory.
The energy making all this possible is due, in part, to the festival’s return to the place it all started, namely, the John Van Duzer Theatre. As recently as last year the festival was held at Arcata’s Minor Theatre but the staff behind event felt it was time for a return to campus.
As it turns out that return has yielded plenty of benefits. “Not only will you get a better movie experience than last year because of our projector and sound system,” says faculty adviser for the festival, David Scheerer, “but also the quality of the entries this year are much higher. We only had 63 entries last year, we had 265 this year.”
Thanks to a grant from the Arcata Foundation, secured by festival co-director Eric Hedstrom, prices have been cut to $5 for general admission, while the festival is free for all students, HSU or otherwise, who hold a current student identification card. The idea is to return the festival to its true owners — the students. “We’re very excited about the festival. All the sudden it felt right to bring it back to campus and to make it available to students,” adds Scheerer.
With the number of film entires quadrupled, it was up to the students of Theater, Film and Dance 394 to trim that number down to a manageable 47, which will be shown during the festival.
Festival co-director Benjamin Bettenhausen, who runs the festival class, undauntedly found a way to fit four times more content into the two semester class. “I did the math about half way through the semester and I was like ‘uh oh, we’re not going to finish,’” Bettenhausen says.
“So I had to develop — very mathematically — a rate of entry submission. If this rate continues until next month, we will have this many, and we’ll have to lengthen the classes, double up during the week and the students were really flexible with that.”
The festival class is open to all majors, although it requires faculty approval before registering. The 28 students who make up this year’s class are the lifeblood behind the festival. “I’d say half the class are film makers but the other half are ordinary students who just like watching films and I’m so thankful for that statistical balance. I really wanted these films to geared toward the average film viewer not just the film-making film viewer,” says Bettenhausen.
Aimee Hennessy, the third of the festival’s three student co-directors, was charged with the task of securing a panel of judges. After much searching, the panel Hennessy put together is a diverse lineup of film makers, each with their own unique biographies.
Starting the week off on Wednesday, March 26, is Ry Russo-Young, a young up-and-coming film maker, who will be judging the experimental film and animation night.
On Thursday night, adjudicating duties fall on Joaquin Alvarado, founding director of the Institute for Next Generation Internet at San Francisco State University. Alvarado, who will judge documentary films, is an award-winning Chicano film maker.
Lastly, Lori Petty, an artist of many flavors, will judge the narrative films on Friday night as well as emcee the awards night on Saturday, March 29. An accomplished actress in her own right, Petty recently began directing films and also includes visual arts and clothing design on her resume.
At 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of the festival, each of the judges will present a workshop on their area of expertise. These workshops are free and open to the public.
In all, the 41st annual Humboldt Film Festival promises to be one of the best. Carrying on the tradition HSU students started in 1967 is a task with big responsibilities, after all, this is the oldest student-run festival of its kind.
Now that admission is free to all students the festival can look forward to a renewed energy from campus, but the real energy comes from the films themselves. David Scheerer explains: “I’ve been a film maker 20 years now — I was apart of the Sundance Film Festival when it was still the U.S. Film & Video Festival in the mid 80s — I’ve been a little bit around the block and I have to say that the quality of the films, the production values of the films that the audience will come see this year, will blow them away.”
For more information, including complete festival schedule and more, visit the Humboldt Film Festival .