The Stuyvesant Film Community (SFC), founded late last year, has had a rocky start.
Juniors and co-founders Jos Diaz and J.J. Russo wanted to create a community in which inspired students could find actors, equipment and camera crews.
“Though we did have three very successful interest meetings last year, […] we failed to capitalize on that interest,” club secretary and junior Thomas Ansorge said.
After a year of inaction with fewer than a dozen serious ideas and only one film, “College Movie,” going into production, the club’s administration realized a change needed to take place.
“Our idea from the beginning was to have larger film projects going on,” Russo said. “We had just wanted to get people who were interested and say ‘go make a movie.’”
“We really had no idea what we were doing. We were expecting that other people would be as interested in movies as we were,” Diaz said. “Even though there was a lot of interest, there wasn’t that much motivation. We needed a forum before anyone would really want to participate.”
The SFC created a forum with Frighstival, its first annual Halloween film festival. Designed specifically for low-budget short films, Frighstival was held in Lecture Hall A on Monday, October 29.
Submissions had only two criteria: they had to be Halloween-related and longer than a minute but shorter than “Titanic.” This lax attitude, along with the holiday theme, brought the SFC a great rise in activity.
“Halloween, we really chose because it’s just a great jumping off point for creativity,” Russo said.
Frighstival received seven film submissions and over 60 people attended the event. “We were quite happy with [what we got],” Ansorge said. “It was much better than we feared, and somewhat better than we expected.”
Frighstival’s major draw was its atmosphere. “The SFC gives you an audience that would otherwise just be reduced to a few friends or family members,” sophomore Tara Anantharam said. She submitted a short film to the festival. “You get a whole supportive community to watch your film,” she said.
Faculty advisor and video production teacher Elka Gould strongly agreed. “[It’s] not about self promotion. It’s more about a true desire to learn about filmmaking with [one’s] peers,” she said.
Russo and Diaz worked fervently to promote and organize Frightsival. They had the room reserved and the guest judges—teachers at Stuyvesant—in place before announcing the event through word of mouth and a flurry of advertising. Over 500 posters were put up over the course of one week.
“One thing that disappointed me was that four of the seven films had been made previously, which means only three had been made as a response to the festival,” Ansorge said.
Russo and Diaz believe contributions will increase for future festivals. They are already planning the next one, which will be holiday-themed. “We don’t want to make [the festivals] all too similar,” Russo said. “A lot of holidays just don’t give as much opportunity to move around.”
The next film festival is slated for late January or early February so student filmmakers can work over winter break. Submissions must incorporate a list of elements, which the SFC administration will choose. The films will be judged by how successfully they use these elements, among other criteria.
As for the future of the club, the current club officers haven’t discussed it yet. “We know that the institution will survive, though we haven’t started looking at perspective heirs to our thrones,” Diaz said. “If you look at the [Stuyvesant Theater Community], the slate really just does their jobs as assigned by the charter. That’s what we hope to achieve eventually.”
The SFC is also excited to start working on large-scale projects, like they did with “College Movie.” They hope to have several in production at any given time, and would eventually like this to be their main function.
Many members are itching to start work on these films. “I want to make a longer movie, and actually learn something about being a director,” junior and Frighstival winner Simon Szybist said. “The SFC is real motivation for anybody who wants to direct in the future. And, I think it’s just fun,” he said.
Anantharam also believed the club would succeed. “It’s definitely going to take time to build up a strong foundation, but they can do it,” she said. “I’m sure the community is going to grow steadily. It’s all a matter of getting the word out.”
The club will likely begin to hold writers’ meetings similar to those it held last year, to find a project that will spark interest. Because the SFC holds no regular meetings, however, ideas are often tossed around in their online forums.
“There’s no real scheme for how the club works, we just hope it does,” Diaz said. “The whole point of the SFC is to eventually become another outlet of student creativity.”
