FilmFest celebrates Vassar filmmakers

A torrid affair between a professor and a student. Challenges to abstinence-only sex education. Long Island clam diggers. These are some of the topics to be explored through the camera lens at the third annual Vassar FilmFest, a scholarship benefit presented by the Vassar Club of Washington, D.C.

The FilmFest is a day-long celebration of recent films made by Vassar faculty, alumnae/i and students featuring screenings, a reception and the opportunity to interact with the filmmakers. This year, it falls at the end of October Break on Saturday, Oct. 20 at The George Washington University.

FilmFest Screening Producer Ann Loikow ’70 said that the club originally held a book sale as its chief scholarship fundraiser for D.C.-area students. They decided to look for an alternative way to raise money and settled on a film festival after realizing a number of Vassar alumnae/i and professors were involved in filmmaking.

In its third year, the FilmFest has several objectives. “[The FilmFest] publicizes Vassar filmmakers’ work, raises money for scholarships, and is a unique form of admissions outreach to the Washington area,” said Loikow.

This year, the festival will showcase six films. The featured attraction of this year’s festival is Open Window, written and directed by Mia Goldman ’77. The film chronicles the engagement between a struggling photographer and an assistant professor that is marred by an act of violence. Robin Tunney, Joel Edgerton, Cybil Shepard and Elliot Gould star in the film, which received the Best Director award at the 2006 LA Femme Film Festival.

Another highly anticipated film is Rough Cut, a collaborative project by Professor of Drama and Film James Steerman and Rebecca Holderness ’79. In 40-minute film, Ms. Julia, a film professor at a liberal arts college, becomes embroiled in an affair with a male student while the two work on a film adaptation of August Strindberg’s play “Miss Julie.”

“The film is a contemporary story about another sort of relationship between an older woman and a young man that, given the social and philosophical implications of it, is also doomed,” said Steerman, who also wrote the screenplay.

Rough Cut, which was shot at various locations at Vassar as well as in New York City, invited film students to take on integral production roles. “My intent was to have a large number of students work on something more complex than anything they would have had a chance to do in class,” said Steerman. “All the students were great, we couldn’t have made the film without them.”

Marion Lipschutz ’80 takes on abstinence-only sex education in Texas in her documentary, The Education of Shelby Knox. Lipschutz follows a teenage girl who joins a campaign for comprehensive sex education in high schools in a Texas town.

The festival also spotlights Diggers by Katherine Dieckmann ’83, which was warmly received by critics earlier this year. The drama is a group portrait of four friends who work as clam diggers in Long Island in the ’70s. The New York Times film critic Stephen Holden wrote, “Meticulously assembled, Diggers shuttles among several major characters with an ease and grace that don’t waste a moment of screen time. But it doesn’t feel rushed.”

Two short films by 2007 Vassar graduates will also be screened. Hillary Lavin’s Not a Period Correct Gun examines the lives of Civil War re-enactors, and Anna Moot-Levin explores her devotion to her 18-year-old cousin, a Cystic Fibrosis patient, in A Breath of Life.

Loikow encourages anyone interested in filmmaking and Vassar’s advances in the industry to attend. “Vassar has an incredible film program,” said Loikow. “I think people are just beginning to understand what kind of work faculty, alumnae/i and students are doing.”

The Vassar FilmFest will take place Saturday, Oct. 20 from 1-9 p.m. at the Jack Morton Auditorium at The George Washington University. For more information about the festival, visit vassardc.org/film/.