Graduates, look for details about tomorrow's ceremony in your inbox! Looking forward to celebrating you!
FTVM WN 2023 END-OF-TERM EVENTS AND NEWS
FTVM Honors Students Win Accolades!
Current Honors Student Rose Albayat Awarded Arthur Miller Award
The LSA Honors Program awarded FTVM honors student Rose Albayat the Arthur Miller Creative Arts Award for her thesis, "Reshuffling the Deck: Georges Méliès’ Studio A." The Arthur Miller Award is one of nine Goldstein Honors Graduation Prizes, each of which recognizes a different field of study (e.g. social science, science, math, creative arts, etc.,...) and is named in honor of a University of Michigan Alumnus famous in the field. For her thesis, Rose conducted in-depth historical research to create a hyper-detailed model of Georges Méliès’ film studio in 3D and VR and reshoot one of his films. In the process, Rose investigates what is learned about early cinema filmmaking practices from utilizing this "research as practice" method that has not been gleaned from more traditional scholarly practice. Rose will be honored at the Honors Program Award Ceremony Thursday, April 27, 2023, at 7:00 PM.
The LSA Honors Program selected 2023-2024 FTVM Honors student Atticus Spicer as one of the 2023 Honors Summer Fellows. The award provides an interdisciplinary cohort of students with especially innovative thesis projects with research funds as well as a stipend to support their residency in Ann Arbor over the summer to work on their projects. The cohort also receives mentorship and support from LSA Honors staff and recent alumni.
Atticus's integrated thesis (i.e. part studies, part creative practice), tentatively titled "Psycho at Large", argues that accepted theories of horror and slashers need to better account for non-binary understandings of gender, sex, and gender transformation, particularly within contemporary slasher films. Attitcus will then create a horror webcomic that visualizes and narrativizes their argument and findings.
Congratulations Atticus!
Congratulations to FTVM Undergrad Hannah Dando,
Recipient of the Winer Scholarship for Internship Support
Hannah Dando has recently accepted an internship with NBC Universal Pictures (under Focus Features) as their Filmed Entertainment Intern for this upcoming summer in Universal City, CA. Hannah will be trained and educated on every aspect of creating a film, from selecting screenplays to the very final line of movie theater distribution. Shadowing a top-line employee from NBC Universal, Hannah will acquire skills in project management/producing tasks such as location scouting, casting, director research, call sheet preparation, finance management, and log completion. To finalize the internship at the end of the summer, Hannah will be tasked with presenting a research-based pitch to the entire executive team at Focus Features. Congratulations, Hannah!
FTVM Congratulates the Winter 2023 FTVM 150 Audiovisual Essay Festival Winners!
Back Row, (L-R): Ellie Ngassa, Jack Yerington, Andrew Mojares, Aden Flora, Solomon Trice
Middle Row (L - R) Professor Herbert, Amy Douglas, Mena Nasiri, Lexa Jones.
Front (seated) Professor Rivero
The FTVM 150 Audiovisual Essay Festival showcases the hard work, critical acumen, and creativity that went into FTVM 150 students' final capstone projects, in which each student made an original critical argument in audiovisual essay form about a selected film or television episode that was studied in the course. Winners in a number of categories were selected by a vote of the enrolled students in attendance and a panel of judges. This year's Best of Festival Award went to Ellie Ngassa for her essay, "Examining Representations of Black Women in Insecure."
Best of FestivalEllie Ngassa, "Examining Representations of Black Women in Insecure."
Best Use of Sound Mixing & Editing
Anonymous, “The Female Gender in Film and Television”
Best Use of Text
Mena Nasiri, "Hill Street Blues and Representations of Race"
Best Editing
Andrew Mojares, "1950s Sitcoms and Women Within the Home"
Most Entertaining
Amy Douglas, "Reclaiming “Awkward” in The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl"
Most Original Argument
Jack Yerington, "The Honeymooners and Unions"Excellent Analysis of Social Issues
Maria Maidens, "Black Mirror and Feminine Rage"
Lexa Jones, "Examining Latinidad Representation in One Day at a Time"Special Commendations:
Anonymous, "The Sopranos Pilot: Masculinity and Trauma"
Aden Flora, "Leave it to Beaver" and American Consumerism
FTVM Congratulates the Winter 2023 Lightworks Festival Winners!
Presented by FTVM's student organization FVSA (Film and Video Student Association),
the Lightworks Festival provides a venue for students to present their end-of-term production coursework
to classmates, family, and friends. Winter 2023 Lightworks Festival winners are listed below.
Best of Festival Boys and Husbands, dir. Macy Goller
Animation Best Animation - Blood on My Hands, dir. Adriana Totaro
Cinematography Best Cinematography - Boys and Husbands, dir. Macy Goller
Comedy Best Comedy - Boys and Husbands, dir. Macy Goller
Drama Best Drama - Perspective, dir. Shaun Samtani
Documentary Best Documentary - Lambda Lady, dir. Julissa Cardiel
Editing Best Editing - Till There Was You,dir. Gabriella Dias
Experimental Best Experimental - How Terrific: Diana Arbus In Her Own Words,dir. Bond
Horror Best Horror - Deadbeat, dir. Lance Giuliano
Music Video Best Music Video - Neuter, dir. Megan Lindeboom
Original Score Best Original Score - Boys and Husbands, dir. Macy Goller
Sound Design Best Sound Design - Artificial Sound, dir. Brad Nelson
TV Best TV - Dare On the Diag, dir. Joseph Berg
FTVM Judges' Honorable Mentions:
Sophia Chen, Out for Blood
Tanite Chahwan, Themme Fatale
Brinni Gentry, Violin Monster
Paul Sutherland, The Bug Collector
The Writer's Room Stages a Reading of the Original Series Hexed
Photo at left, Showrunner Marissa Dutton and Narrator Hannah Dando
Photos courtesy of Marissa Dutton
The student group Writer’s Room conducted a staged reading of Hexed on Wednesday, April 19, 2023, in the Kuenzel Room at the Michigan Union. The Writer's Room is a student-run, year-long club that focuses on the development of the entire first season of an original television series. This year's feature, Hexed, tells the tale of a teenage witch, who, when a botched summoning spell accidentally kills her best friend, must employ the help of humans, witches, and an evil deity as she ventures across a vast forest in an effort to resurrect her friend. Congratulations to the following FTVM majors who played a role in Hexed: Marissa Dutton, Morgan Kisner, Zora Kwasnik, Eesha Nagwani, Elle Pugh, and Ben Wishnie.
Read more about the Writer's Room in the Michigan Daily interview with Marissa Dutton, here.
THIS WEEK'S NEWS
Assistant Professor Swapnil Rai Co-writes Essay for Pop-Junctions and Talks with India's Open Magazine
Assistant Professor Swapnil Rai co-wrote an essay "The Sound of Protest: Bollywood’s Jimmy Jimmy and COVID unrest in China" for Pop Junctions. Her essay delves into the recent Covid protests in China by factory workers in the wake of strict lockdowns that utilized a transnationally popular Bollywood song "Jimmy Jimmy" from the 1982 film Disco Dancer. In particular, Rai's essay explores the following: 1) What qualities make a song a protest song? and 2) How do we account for the transcultural, trans-linguistic flow of the song, and what does this exchange reveal about the cultural dissemination and absorption of Bollywood in China?
Rai was also recently interviewed by India's Open Magazine about her work on Bollywood's female star turned producers in the context of the newly released Amazon show Jubilee that delves into the history of women star-turned-producers in Hindi cinema in the 1930s and '40s.
Lecturer Matthew Noble-Olson Featured on Michigan Daily Arts Podcast
Lecturer Matthew Noble-Olson recently appeared as a guest on Arts, Interrupted, the arts podcast of The Michigan Daily to discuss the value of teaching bad movies. Prompted by the release of Cocaine Bear, the episode covers the question of why a course on film theory might include films that are conventionally understood as bad, how the category of the bad movie has evolved, and why Gremlins 2 should be taught alongside films like Citizen Kane.
THIS WEEK'S FEATURED PHOTOS
M-agination Hosts End-of-Year Film Festival at Michigan Theater
photos courtesy Morgan Kowalewski
Celebrating another amazing year, the M-agination Film Festival successfully screened 15 student-produced films to friends, family, and attendees at the Michigan Theatre on Thursday, April. 20, 2023.
