Film Schools

What happened at AIVF over the last 30 years?

I first became aware of AIVF when Martha Gever was editor of The Independent. I marveled at this national organization that put out each month a magazine chock full of weighty, intellectual and critical articles on film and video.

Although the cinematic possibilities of Hawai’i—those that lay beyond the tropical tropes of tourism and military patriotism— have always been clear to local residents of the island, only recently has there been notable validation of that truth. The sudden abundance of studio work, a new school for multimedia, and the proliferation of local film festivals, are all signs of Hawai’i developing into a vibrant place to make film and video and for local filmmakers to cultivate a strong community.

In July, acclaimed Indian-born filmmaker Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Mississippi Masala) unveiled her latest project: a film lab for aspiring filmmakers and screenwriters from East Africa and South Asia. Built on the Sundance Film Institute model, MAISHA—which means “zest for life” in Kiswahili—will hold its first session in August 2005 in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda in northeast Africa.

The so-called “Film Brat” generation of the middle to late 1970s has been blamed for, or credited with, many things regarding independent filmmaking—from sparking off a studio-sanctioned Golden Age (Scorsese, Coppola) to ushering in a studio-sanctioned Dark Age (Lucas, Spielberg).

Located in the heart of North Carolina, the Triangle is an area defined by the cities at its three points (Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh) and the universities within it (the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Duke University, and North Carolina State). Each point of the Triangle is about half an hour away from the others.

If one thing can be said about Athens it is that it has proved time and time again to be a true breeding ground for creativity. Given that reputation, it is no wonder so many artists call Athens home. “It really is only in Athens that you can find the type of person who has the heart of an artist, the soul of a geek, and the mind of an academic. That is what distinguishes Athens from other places. There are people that really have no problem moving back and forth between all those areas,” says Scott Shamp, director of Athens’ New Media Institute.

Community Media Conference

September 9–15, 2002

Film schools embody the most mythologized sector of academia. They retail dreams. They sell success. They market creativity. Sometimes dubbed “the artist’s MBA,” film schools have undergone massive transformations since the 1970’s. They have mutated from outposts for creative dissidents into pre-professional programs.

Twice a week, Marc Bacus comes home from his day-job as an administrator at Southern Illinois University and logs on for a two- to three-hour chat session with a splinter group of screenwriters who call themselves the Viewmasters [www.viewmasters.org]. "There was such fierce competition at Zoetrope's screenwriting site that a few of us decided to start our own group," he says.