March 31 will mark the beginning of the 20th annual Johns Hopkins Film Festival. The festival is curated by the Hopkins Film Society (HFS) and will feature three screenings of feature films and a collection of independent exhibitions.
Showings will be spread across three days and set at both the Homewood Campus and the new JHU-MICA Film Centre on North Avenue.
The festival will commence with a showing of ‘70s dark comedy Harold and Maude at Shriver Hall. On April 1, the festival’s second day, presenters will move to the Film Centre to speak about their love for the art of film.
According to the HFS co-director Julia Gunnison, the series of presentations is a new element that will feature Baltimore artists such as Skizz Cyzyk, Jimmy Joe Roche and Becca Morin, all of whom have ties to film. These talks will be followed by a release party for the HFS zine, WAVEWAVE, which is published two to three times a year.
The following day begins with screenings from the Baltimore Student Filmmaker Program (BSFP). The BSFP is an HFS-led program with films made by University students and one Baltimore high school student.
Gunnison commented on the inclusion of the BSFP productions.
“That program takes place at 2:30 p.m. on April 2 and showcases the work of student filmmakers in Baltimore. This program includes many different kinds of films, which makes it very dynamic and interesting; We’re very excited for it,” she wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
After the presentations by the Filmmaker Program, the documentary shorts selected by the society will be shown. At the end of the evening there will be a screening of the 1999 drama The Virgin Suicides.
The fourth and final day of the festival is solely dedicated to fictional shorts. At the end, the day will be brought to a close with the final feature presentation; My Neighbor Totoro, the fourth film made by iconic Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki.
Original works from ten different directors will be presented during the festival under two different categories: documentary and fiction. The ten final choices were selected from the 118 submissions that the Film Society received.
The documentarians are Bob Krist; Jason Outenreath; Kelly Adams; Christianna Miller; Jessica Sherry, who is making her debut with Waiting for John, a film about an obscure cult called “the John Frum Movement”; and Kendal Miller, who is presenting his film The Flying Dutchmen. This film follows an elderly man approaching blindness across United States.
The independent contributors are a collection of visual arts professionals whose experiences are as varied as the films they are presenting. Kirst is a noted photographer. Adams has worked in cinema in India. Outenreath founded a nonprofit which seeks to educate through film.
The fiction contributors are Cecelia Condit, Nicolas DeGrazia, Nick Wernham and Saj Pothiawala. This group of indiv also brings a variety of experiences. Condit is an award-winning artist specializing in video production.
DeGrazia is the co-founder of Bitter Jest Creative, a noted Illinois production company; Wernham is a Canadian director who recently worked with Alison Brie and Colin Hanks to make No Stranger Than Love, a 2015 romantic comedy. Pothiawala has worked for CollegeHumor, BuzzFeed, AOL and MSN, along with creating his own production company, LandlineTV; Vegas, featured at the Festival, is his short film debut.
Gunnison expressed excitement for Condit’s short, Pulling Up Roots.
“It’s the only experimental film we’re screening this year, which makes it stand out. I love the poeticism of this piece, and particularly it’s mysterious and melodic [voice-over] narration,” Gunnison wrote. “It’s a strange and beautiful little film that I’m still trying to figure out.”
The three feature films selected for the festival are The Virgin Suicides, My Neighbor Totoro and Harold and Maude, which has been stored in the Library of Congress.
Gunnison cited a “loose springtime theme” for these films. The marketing team of the festival picks up on this theme, including the featured poster.
“[The films] have an energy, colorfulness, and humor that we thought fit with the season,” she wrote.
