After a successful Fall Film Festival debut last year with a large participation, Mills is back hosting their second ever Fall Film Festival. This festival was open to all Mills students to submit their produced films to show off their creative filmmaking talents to have the chance at being showcased during the event.
The film festival had a total of 23 films showcased ranging from a variety of genres such as comedy, action, horror, drama, and documentary. The film festival was a great way for students’ films and talents to be recognized and honored.
One of the films that was in the festival featured the Thunderbolt newspaper being read by a student in their film, “The Unsolved Case of the Missing Paper.”
The festival also highlighted films from beginning and advanced video production students, a VAPA elective at Mills. Video production students would get into groups and work together as a team to produce a high-quality mini movie. A few selected secondary films that the students directed had also made it into the festival.
This film festival was made possible by a few of the advanced students who put together all the videos of the films into a large video file for the audience to watch.
At the end of the program, they held an award ceremony where the audience voted on Google Form for their favorite film from each category. Those include: comedy, action, horror, documentary, and independent film. The audience also voted for the best overall film and a group to receive the Upcoming Filmmakers award. Each category that won received awards for their hard work, dedication, and making a great film.
One of the films that won the “Best Action”, “Best Comedy”, and “Best Overall” voted by the audience was “Poser” directed by Patrick Olila (10) and Taylar Giusti (10).
“Poser” is a film about a boy who’s bad at skateboarding and is called a poser, but he picks up a Monster Energy drink and then becomes a really great skater.
“Living life, a lot of people will make fun of you and stuff for things you like. I like skating and a lot of people will call you a poser. I’m kind of a poser because I can’t skate well. I just thought of a quick, simple idea and thought it would be pretty cool,” explained Olila on the thought process behind the film “Poser.”
This was Olila’s first year in video production, and he has never made a film before. His first-made film was a huge smashing success and won multiple categories.
“Honestly, it felt really surprising. I thought that there would be way better films than mine … I’m just really happy and proud that I have the privilege to win such an award right now.” expressed Olila.
The film, “A Clown Problem,” produced by Andrew Barrientos (12), Kaden Chow (12), Sepehr Rastani (12), Arashdeep Singh (12), and Yurem Lopez (11) won “Best Horror.”
“We wanted to come up with an action movie, and that’s what we came up with. It took us about three days to film. Every group member worked hard on it. You know, just winning this award means a lot to me,” says Rastani.
“A Clown Problem” is a horror film where a student is studying and falls asleep dreaming. He dreams about a clown chasing him and he fights it. In a suspenseful finale, he wakes up from the dream and the clown sits next to him in real life.
Congratulations to all filmmakers whose film made it to the film festival. We can’t wait to watch what upcoming films will be at the Spring Film Festival in April.
