Visions Film Festival & Conference, which
is arguably the flagship “course” within the UNCW Film Studies curriculum,
provides an opportunity that you cannot find elsewhere within the department
for undergraduate students. I am truly proud to have been a part of this event
for two years now, and I’m even more proud to having been able to work with
such amazing teams and meeting all of the filmmakers and scholars.
I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity
to work for both Visions4 and Visions5. Looking back on last year’s event
(2014), I have noticed some things that did work and some that didn’t. First, I
would like to say how excited I was that we had filmmakers and scholars from
Visions4 submit their work again to Visions5. Even though we had a few selected
filmmakers and scholars from Visions4 have their work programmed for Visions5,
we also received a lot of submissions from Visions4 alumni whose work was not
chosen for programming.
At the conclusion of Visions4, I knew that we
were going to be in for quite a challenge if we wanted to top it. But I was up
for the challenge. Last year, everything went so smoothly and I think that was
so because of how everyone was on the same page throughout the semester. I
think that for the most part we were all on the same page this semester;
however, I do wish that we could have had all members of programming +
operations attend both Lumina/media walkthroughs. Last year, we had everyone
from both departments attend the last media walkthrough and everyone was on the
same page (and Sandra had recommended doing this for future years).
Overall, this year was a great experience and
I am very pleased to have been a part of this wonderful group and to help run
this event. We were able to program some great films + papers, and I am truly
happy to have had this opportunity.
