On the last day of April, a Maine college film festival called Film Chowdah was held at The Maine Studios in Portland. As its inaugural event, it aimed to provide a greater outlet for student-made films from the USM, Southern Maine Community College, and Maine College of Art. Of the eight awards presented, six of them were given to USM students.
Corey Norman, an adjunct faculty member of USM’s art department and SMCC’s Communication/Media Studies department, conceived the idea with several students and faculty members at SMCC approximately five weeks before the event was held.
“So many students show off their films in their respective classrooms and film festivals at USM and SMCC, but there isn’t a larger audience,” Norman said. “I wanted to create an event that would involve all colleges in the Southern Maine area and create greater opportunities for exposure and networking.”
Norman initially sought out Cinemagic Westbrook as the venue of choice, but the theatre’s price was too high for the festival’s modest budget. Soon after, John E. Seymore, Studio Executive of The Maine Studios, offered free space at his compound, allowing for the festival to run at an incredibly low budget of $120.
22 films were submitted from the three schools, ranging in genre from suspense to drama to documentary. Some of the films transcended the lines of what we normally think of genre films. One such film was “Halls in Walls,” an experimental film made by The Free Press’ very own, Randy Hazleton. The video showed filtered footage of Hazleton tearing apart a drywall and then an empty hallway with a degraded structure. The two shots faded in and out of each other, focusing on the contrast between shadow and light while an electronica song played in the background. In one way, it could be seen as a documentation of Hazleton’s drywall experiment, but it was also a music video and an art film.
Best Writer and Best Actor went to senior Matthew Rideout (Marketing) won for his parody film of the popular computer game, The Sims. In the film, Rideout finds himself in the game and is fated by the control of the computer user, who ultimately traps him in a room fire and kills him -as most Sims players do at some point. Best Director, David Lovejoy won for “A Lifelong Love,” a documentary about a local pinball wizard in Portland. The film was directed under guidance of USM faculty Kate Kaminski and Nat Ives for the media studies documentary class. Best Actress was a tie between Kate Courie of SMCC and Leigh Churchill of USM, who starred in a short experimental piece called “She Deserved to Die Anyways…”. The Innovative Production award was given to Justin Levesque, who made a unique visual mosaic comprised of various clips taken with his iPhone. For Best Film, Franklin Kendrick took the award for his animated sci-fi drama, “Eternity.”
A viewer’s choice was also run but the results have not yet been released. Three of the winners will have their work showcased on a special hour spot on the CW TV channel.
Professor Norman hopes Film Chowdah will become a new Maine tradition and eventually expand to cover more colleges. To stay updated for next year’s Film Chowdah, bookmark and visit http://www.filmchowdah.com/.
This press release is biased and incorrect. Saying that 6 out of 8 awards were all given to USM students is simply a lie. There were at least 4 awards given to SMCC students…one film in particular winning three awards!
Also…There is no Kate Courie…. her name is Kate Quirion. I know this is a USM paper but journalistic integrity should demand that you at least mention the winners from the other schools rather than ignore anything outside of USM.