This weekend, the primary events of the seventh annual Ivy Film Festival will bring visitors from colleges and universities around the country to campus to watch student films and attend a class taught by Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese.
The festival acts as a venue for undergraduate and graduate students to screen their films and learn from each other and from professional guests and speakers from the film industry.
Planning for this year's festival began the day after last year's events ended, said the festival's associate director, Elizabeth Backup '08. "It's definitely a year-round process," she said, noting that a group of 40 students has been working hard all year to get the screenings, lectures and contestants organized.
Scorsese's visit is garnering the most attention, Backup said. "Having such a filmmaking legend really allows us to make the festival better as a whole because it provides us with more publicity and allows us to get more sponsorship and catch the eye of Brown students."
Tonight, Ari Gold's "Adventures in Power," the story of a miner whose love of "air-drumming" helps him escape small-town New Mexico, will be shown in Salomon 101. The film, which was also screened at Sundance Film Festival, will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Gold.
Saturday will feature several workshops for the filmmakers in the morning, more student film screenings, Scorsese's Masterclass at 3 p.m. in Salomon 101 and, at 8 p.m., the award ceremony for student filmmakers, to be followed by a lecture by Tom Rothman, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment.
Scorsese's new Rolling Stones documentary/concert film "Shine a Light" will be screened at 12 p.m. and 5 p.m. at the Avon Cinema on Thayer Street. Tickets will be available today at a table in the post office or on the Main Green.
Four major awards will be given on Saturday night, for domestic films, screenplays, international films and machinima films - those made using video game graphics and characters. The machinima award is new to the festival this year.
The screening of the winning student films at 2 p.m. on Sunday will conclude the festival.
The directors are expecting about 75 student filmmakers and their guests to arrive in Providence this weekend, Backup said. About 20 of the visiting student filmmakers are from Ivy League schools.
