USC, UCLA and American Film Institute are Los Angeles area schools that typically get the most recognition for their film programs. But Cal State Northridge is seeing its profile rise a bit in the face of those giants, even making it to The Hollywood Reporter’s list of the 25 top film schools twice in the last three years.
On Wednesday, the school held its 27th annual Senior Film Showcase at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, giving five senior students the honor of seeing their short films on the big screen for the first time, at the illustrious Beverly Hills location. The films of about 15 minutes each were made with small budgets of about $25,000 to $40,000 and professional actors.
“A lot of good things have happened this past year,” said Nate Thomas, professor in CSUN’s Cinema and Television Arts department and director of the Senior Film Showcase. CSUN last year received $2 million from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and has used half to upgrade its facilities, particularly editing and sound equipment. This summer, they’ll upgrade their TV studio to high-definition.
The other half of the donation is being used to further the school’s efforts to increase diversity in the field of filmmaking.
“The filmmakers are diverse,” Thomas said of the students in Wednesday’s showcase. “We’re the example for Hollywood. … We believe in inclusion. We have given so many African Americans, Latinos and Asians the opportunity to make films with substance.”
For Desirée V. Castro, film is a third career. Castro previously was a professional off-Broadway dancer, then an event coordinator. Just before the show got underway Wednesday, Castro was nervous but excited to see her film “Revelé” premiere at the Academy.
“It’s such an honor. It’s such an opportunity. And to see it on a big screen is going to be amazing. I am so excited – and frightened at the same time!”
“It is a global issue,” Castro said about “Revelé,” which tells the story of a ballet dancer trying to escape an abusive relationship as she’s on the cusp of a career breakthrough. “Everybody has to deal with some type of abuse in their life, be it knowing somebody who had been abused or they had gone through it themselves. … It’s something that needs to be brought an awareness to.” Castro said she next plans to submit her film to festivals.
Jeremy Ashley Pair went with a “Pleasantville”-style approach for his short film “Golden Age” about a granddaughter finding a new appreciation for her grandmother with Alzheimer’s when the two venture back in time, and into a black-and-white WWII movie her grandmother starred in.
“The main thing about it that interested me the most was this idea of actors being forgotten once they get older and their films aren’t as successful anymore. People kind of forget about them.” The film was shot in Travel Town at Griffith Park, Sherman Oaks and Eagle Rock.
USC and AFI might have more prominent film schools, but CSUN’s has its own character, he said.
“At CSUN, you have a little bit more, I feel like, working-class folks, people coming from less than wealthy means that are able to still pursue a great education at a university that offers a great film program with so many professors that have been in the industry.”
Santa Clarita portrayed Israel in Daniel Yonathan’s film “Ben-Dod Sheli.” Two cousins, one Israeli and one American, end up in a hot situation with a Palestinian when they get into a stolen taxi cab, with disastrous results.
Yonathan said the idea came from a 2014 visit to Israel during the Gaza War, when Yonathan was 21. As he rode in a taxi cab, he heard an air-raid siren and saw a rocket shot down above him.
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘What is going on? This is not America. This is different,’” Yonathan said. “At the core root that we were trying to explore was what does it feel (like) to hate someone? What does it feel (like) to act that hate? And how are we kind of the same person, with completely different paint?”
Bill Duke, director of movies like “Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit,” and actor in “Predator,” “Bird on a Wire” and many others, hosted the night.
“They all had something to say,” Duke said of the student films. “It wasn’t just making movies. They had a message.
“To see these young people coming along and doing that, it’s so inspiring.”
