Undergrad film students make Sundance Film Festival their classroom this week
Kim Chaudoin | 615.966.6494 |
Saturday morning, Jan. 19, a delegation of undergraduate film students left Nashville for a unique opportunity to experience first-hand one of the industry’s pivotal events — the Sundance Film Festival.
Dave DeBorde, associate professor and director of the film and creative media program in Lipscomb’s College of Entertainment & the Arts, is expanding the borders of his classroom this week as he leads the group of ten students to the iconic festival held annually in Park City, Utah.
The Sundance Film Festival, a program of the Sundance Institute, is a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival comprises competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections. With 46,660 attendees in 2016, it is the largest independent film festival in the United States.
“This is an opportunity that is exclusively for our undergraduate film students to learn the business of the industry by attending a festival that operates at the highest level and plays such a key role,” said DeBorde. “We are making the Sundance Film Festival our classroom for the week as we attend panels and lectures, view films that haven’t been released and interact with professionals who can give insight into all aspects of the film industry.”
DeBorde said students will be conduct interviews and shoot videos while there in additional to attending festival sessions and events. When the students return to Nashville, they will write a paper about their experiences.
“They are going to have fun, but an important purpose of this trip is to demythologize the industry,” he said. “They will see that many, many people are involved in various aspects of producing films, and that they can do it, too.”
Sixteen films are competing in the U.S. Dramatic category. These films include “Brigsby Bear,” starring Kyle Mooney, Claire Danes, Mark Hamill and Greg Kinnear among others; “The Hero,” starring Sam Elliott; “Walking Out,” starring Matt Bomer, Josh Wiggins, Bill Pullman and others; and “The Yellow Birds,” featuring Jennifer Aniston in its principal cast.
DeBorde said students will also participate in the Windrider Forum at Sundance taking place during the film festival. The Windrider Forum is an immersive educational experience for students from Christian universities using the Sundance Film Festival as a dynamic learning laboratory for students, as Christians, to engage in a cultural dialogue as it takes shape. This year, students from
“I am particularly excited about the opportunity our students will have this week to get to know other Christian student filmmakers,” he said. “The Winrider Forum will also provide additional opportunities to view films, to talk to filmmakers and to have dialogue about the message and meaning found in these works.”
In 2005, Fuller Theological Seminary and Biola University, founded the inaugural Windrider Forum at Sundance to learn from the Sundance filmmakers, to listen to their stories and to find spiritual themes in their work.
For the last two years, students in the College of Entertainment & the Arts’ graduate film program have traveled to the famed Cannes Film Festival, where they networked with professionals attending the festival and examined the ethics of the industry. The trip focused on learning how the film market works, how deals are made, distribution, marketing and how to understand “what the industry is looking for” in terms of themes, quality and product. Lipscomb’s program is one of the few film studies programs in the nation to incorporate a trip to the Cannes Film Festival into its curriculum, said DeBorde. He developed the Sundance trip to provide a similar opportunity for undergraduate students.
The Sundance Film Festival runs from Jan. 19-29. For more information about the College of Entertainment & the Arts, click here.