By
Angela Orlando
Arizona Daily Wildcat
College of Fine Arts to present short-film festival of UA
An obsession with all things French. A grieving recent widow. A 10 year-old boy's struggle for self-awareness. Inspiration and writers' block. Pork rinds and Spandex.
Sounds like a sphinx's riddle waiting to backfire.
These ideas are actually subjects of six short films produced by UA media arts alumni while they still attended the university. The films were senior projects, the culmination of years of preparation, both scholastic and experiential.
The College of Fine Arts is presenting "Life on the Screen," a festival showcasing some of the more recent bachelor of fine arts graduates' work, all of which vary in length and film format.
Michael Mulcahy and Yuri Makino, both assistant professors in media arts, helped Beverly Seckinger, a Media Arts associate professor, put the festival together.
"There were several more films we would have liked to have shown, but space and time were limitations," Mulcahy said.
Diversity of content and style are what makes these particular films shine.
"There's no one model that all these films follow," he said. "They all explore movie-making from very different perspectives."
Matt Harp is one of the alumni filmmakers whose work will illuminate the festival's screen.
Harp's film, "A World Named Jimmy," is an experimental narrative - portions of which are semi-autobiographical. It is a little more than 16 minutes long and is shot in both black-and-white and color.
"It (this topic) wasn't really my first idea for a senior project," Harp said. "It's kind of like a Neil Simon play - a sort of memoir to myself. It explores some pre-adolescent issues, and what society expects. Are you able to be yourself?"
The department of media arts provided cameras, lighting and sound equipment, but the rest of the cost was Harp's responsibility. He said he received a faculty-nominated Haldeman award and a grant from Kodak for film as well as donations - material goods given by business or community members - to help him feed his crew.
He added that the movie cost $10,000 to finish, over half of which came out of his own pocket.
Harp graduated the UA in 1998 and moved to Phoenix for two years to "regroup and get out of debt." He took a refresher filmmaking course, helped out with some student productions and shot a digital music video for friends in a band before moving to Los Angeles.
It was there that Harp gained his first true Hollywood experience, making a digital video for the Marshall Dyllon band, a country-western version of the Backstreet Boys.
Most new Hollywood, Calif. residents find it difficult to obtain a position in the film industry, and must take whatever jobs they can get. Harp said he became an audience coordinator, the "guy who tells live audiences when to applaud." In this position, he worked on the sets of "Mad TV" and the "Guinness Book of World Records."
Now working in the PBS' community outreach department, Harp helps teachers assemble curricula, and organizes events.
"Ultimately, though, I am a cinematographer. That's what I do. I love lighting and camera work," he said. "My aptitudes are more camera-work oriented, and less production oriented."
"This industry is definitely a business. We have an artistic art form, a powerful form of communication, which is controlled by lawyers and accountants. It's Hollywood. It's all about the money. And it's not about who you know, but who knows you," he said.
"A World Named Jimmy" won an audience-favorite award from the Saguaro Film Festival in Scottsdale in May. Curious previewers can see the film at the short-film Web site www.iflim.com.
"The beauty of having the film online is you get instantaneous feedback," Harp said. "A guy in Ireland saw it on the Web and wanted a copy. I feel like I've created something immortal."
"Life on the Screen," which is part of the Tucson Arts Odyssey, will show tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. at the Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering building. Admission and parking are free.
