By Delia Panescu
The scene outside Adams’ Playhouse resembled a Hollywood premiere last Thursday, with student filmmakers walking up a red carpet to the screenings of their films as part of the Hofstra Filmmakers Club’s twice-yearly film festival.
Before the curtain went up, the club’s president, Robert Vornkahl, and vice-president, Kieran Valla, presented themselves as the evening’s hosts. Far from the typical MC-ing usually found at such events, Vornkahl and Valla were pleasant, funny and, most importantly, brief- understanding that the films should speak for themselves.
The selection began with HFC’s first western and continued with films that covered the club’s inside jokes, effects of a drunken choice, the difficult life of assassins and even the dangers of Facebook. Aside from a couple exceptions, the films were excellent. Their professionalism and incredible display of filmmaking and talent blew the audience away.
Robert Specland’s experimental film Snowball, a weird visual adventure with incredible editing and cinematography, took the audience through the “life of a man in modern society” in a most unusual way.
A Slice of Power, directed by Kieran Valla and Dave Beede poked fun at the movie that created Brangelina while also fitting perfectly into the genre. It played seamlessly and at no time removes the audience from the world of assassins it creates.
Josh Haber’s Facebook Me stood out from the rest as an incredibly amusing warning to all students who have wished the networking Web-site could be emulated in real life. The journey the film’s freshman protagonist takes into the world of pokes and poses resonated highly with the film’s audience to offer a terrific satirical look into the world of Web-sites.
In between films, awards were handed out by the club and presented to the winners by alumni after whom these awards were named. Winners included Haber for best screenwriting for Facebook Me and Kristine Bogan for best director for Faking It. Awards were also presented to winners of two contests that had been held throughout the semester. These winners seemed the most impressive of all as their incredible work was done in a set amount of time yet looked just as good as that of the featured films.
The 24-hour screenwriting competition was won by Brian Barry; who created Maneater after drawing the topic of cannibalism. The 48-hour contest winner was the film The Balloonist whose story was as fabulously quirky as its title and ingeniously included the required criteria.The night ended with a tribute video created by incoming HFC officers. These students did a spectacular job and certainly stood out as the stars of the evening.