More than two dozen students from across disciplines screened their short films Monday at Scene One Movieland in downtown Schenectady.
The students were part of Digital Filmmaking and Documentary classes taught by Jim de Sève, senior artist-in-residence, film studies, and co-director of the Film Studies program.
Documentary subjects included films about Union’s sports teams, including basketball (Zach Benmorits ‘28), women’s tennis (Skylar Semon ‘26), cricket (Aaradhya Sharma ‘27), swimming (Walter Kraus ‘25) and crew (Ben Stern ‘26 and Josh Atkinson ‘26).
A still from Josh Atkinson’s '26 short documentary about Tom White, the head men's and women's crew coach.
There were also films about the Kelly Adirondack Center (Annabel Dobash ‘27) and Saratoga’s Flurry Festival (Ilana Goldner ‘26) as well as an impassioned call to put down devices and get out into nature (Mason Baruch ’25). Other documentary filmmakers included Theo Goldman ’26, Yuho Hara ‘27, Frederick Horowitz ‘26, Rory Marquis ‘28 Isabella Rooney ’27 and Rowan Ziegler ‘27.
Three narrative shorts ranged from the downfall of a Michelin star chef (Zach Anisman ‘27, Dove (Farhana) Hoque ‘28, Fay Janssen ’28 and Aida Alaoui Fdili ‘28) to a daring escape from a brain harvesting company (Jac Young ‘27, Adrianna Miles ‘28, Nathan Wright ‘27 and Jady Xiong) to a comedy about three friends’ search for Dinky, the Muffin Man (Jon Forbes ’25, Simon Gray ‘25, Tim McGarry ‘25 and Owen Santora ‘27).
“Our Film Studies production classes are designed to give students a professional film experience, from research and scripting to shooting and editing,” said de Seve.
“Having their final films projected in a real movie theater with a community audience makes students take the process seriously and gives them a deeper level of feedback on their work. They see where the laughs hit or see audience members gasp at a well-placed jump scare shot.”
In a collaboration with Proctors, student films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock in de Seve’s Suspense class and shorts that explore film construction in Cinematic Montage will be screened at the historic theater in the spring term.
