On June 1st, 2022, SOU will be hosting its annual student film festival. The student film festival is a yearly event held by the school’s digital cinema program near the end of each school year.
The event presents a diverse set of films to those attending it. Last year the film festival was held in a parking lot, and in 2020, remotely.
This year, the festival will be held at the Varsity Theater located at 166 E Main St, right near the heart of downtown Ashland. The event will be free for students to attend but will have a fee for the public.
SOU students who created various films during the 2021 – 2022 school year are on the festival’s schedule. A wide range of genres will be shown, from comedy to documentary, action, and horror.
In addition, an award announcement will take place after judges vote for the filmmakers who have the best films. There will also be an after-party right after the festival has concluded; currently, the after-party location is unknown, but the area will be near the Varsity Theater in downtown Ashland.
The SOU student film festival is also part of the class taught by the DCIN program to give students the experience of running a film festival. So, in other words, this is a festival for students, run by students. SOU’s film club will also be assisting greatly with putting the festival together. The festival has been a long-standing tradition of the DCIN program here at SOU, as it serves as a great cap off to the year, and students get to show off all the projects they have worked on during the school year.
We reached out to Ezra Farner, a DCIN major who is the director of the festival and co-president of SOU’s film club, on what he and the rest of the students putting the festival together are hoping to achieve with this year’s show.
“For this year’s festival, we are so excited to be able to hold an in-person event! We hope to bring the community together to celebrate the amazing films created by students and give them the recognition they deserve on the big screen.”
Students who have something they want to submit and can submit it on the festival’s film freeway page. Deadlines for submission close at 11:59 PM, May 5th, and there will be no exceptions to submitting afterward; it must be a complete and finished cut of your film before you submit it. Films can’t be longer than 15 minutes and must adhere to copyright law. Alumni can also submit their films if they have graduated from the DCIN program. Finally, if you recently made a film, submit it in the words of Martin Scorsese’s “true cinema.”
