AIRAN SCRUBY & ALLISON DAVIS
News Editor and Staff Writer
The first-ever Malibu Celebration of Film is underway this week, and the future of the new film festival is in the hands of Pepperdine students, according to one professor who has been integral to planning this year’s event.
Dr. Michael Gose, a professor of Humanities and a member of the new festival’s Board of Directors, said student attendance could make or break the event.
“We know how vital students are to this,” Gose said. “The first year is always the most important year.”
The festival will include more than twenty films, which will show in venues around Malibu and on campus. Gose said the focus of the event is to feature films which have already won awards at other film festivals this season, in order to provide audiences with a look at top contenders for Oscars before the Academy’s nominations are announced.
The five-day festival kicked off yesterday with an opening dinner and a viewing of “A Prairie Home Companion” at Calamigos Ranch. Some films will be screened on campus, while others will be shown around Malibu, in locations like the Malibu Pier and Bluff’s Park.
Gose called the festival an opportunities for students to connect with locals.
“It is a great opportunity for Pepperdine students to interact with the Malibu and film communities,” Gose said.
Today, five films will be shown, three of them on campus. Gose said that while the festival was not originally a Pepperdine event, the university began working with the founders of the festival early in the planning stages, and plans to be part of subsequent years of the celebration of film as art.
Gose said he and one of the founders, David Lyons, had worked together before, and Lyons came to him with the idea of holding a festival with a focus on “the best of the best” from that year’s film season. He and the two other founders, Dolores Rivellino and Bob Klein, all members of the Malibu community, were looking for a venue for the festival.
This began a process of including Pepperdine as a participant in the festival, with the campus as host to films, and students as guests at the festival and ambassadors to the community.
Students will be involved throughout the festival, as student workers who will take tickets, host on-campus events and usher for film screenings.
Karin Sabin, a senior and telecommunications major with an emphasis in film, said she has taken film classes on campus and will be volunteering all week as a “founding member” of the festival. Sabins said one of the positive aspects of the festival is that it will call attention to the new film studies major on campus.
“I think the festival is a fantastic platform for highlighting many genres of film that will only help the film major grow at Pepperdine,” Sabin said.
The film major, added as part of the Humanities Division, is new to the university and will be fully implemented by next year, although there has been a film minor on campus for several years.
Some film classes are geared around exposing students to independent films and also to boost attendance of the festival.
Gose teaches a one-unit film class, and the members of that class can become founding members of the festival. Students taking the class also have to see several independent films as homework, and may count viewings during the Malibu Celebration of Film among these. Many members of the class are working as volunteers during the festival.
Senior John Crabtree said the festival was a chance to raise awareness on campus about the importance of film and an opportunity for students to develop a voice in the entertainment world.
“We live in the heart of film country, and yet we have never had a film festival nor a film major, Crabtree said. “This year, we get to partake in the Malibu Celebration of film, and next year, a film studies major will begin for the first time.”
Crabtree said he hoped the festival would increase the university’s prestige in the film world and eventually make Pepperdine a healthy competitor with other film programs at universities in Southern California.
Gose suggested that students who have not been involved in the film class should still take part in the festival by viewing films.
Among the highlights of the festival will be the free showing of “An Inconvenient Truth” in Alumni Park on Thursday night, and a showing of the film “Pearl Diver,” which Gose said would be relevant to many students on campus because of its themes of religion, exploring individuality and family.
Volunteering opportunities are also available for entertainment industry members through the festival. Coupled with the Malibu Celebration of Film is the Films“Cool” program, a mentoring program that connects high school and college students interested in film with a chance to work in the industry.
During the festival, students will show their work in the form of 30-minute films, and the three best of these will be chosen to receive mentorships or internships at production companies and studios, as well as new camera equipment. Films“Cool” events began yesterday afternoon.
The program is part of a charity co-chaired by Ed Harris, Academy-award nominated actor who has appeared in films like “The Hours” and “The Truman Show,” and his wife, actress Amy Madigan, also nominated for an Oscar for her performance in the 1985 film “Twice in a Lifetime.”
The competition through the charity is scheduled to coincide with the festival each year.
This year’s festival will conclude Sunday. Tickets are on sale for $5 for students at the Diesel Bookstore and the Malibu Colony Plaza.
10-05-2006
