Cinema & Comparative Literature
Student News
PROJECTS, AWARDS & SCREENINGS
This page is for posting of news from current and former students. E-mail your posting to the address at the bottom of the page. Postings must be approved by faculty and may be edited for length.
Fall 2005
ANDY BRODIE was one of 50 students selected internationally to participate in the Telluride Film Festival Student Symposium, held in September in Telluride, Colorado.
ANDY BRODIE'S short film "Round Midnight", won a Gold Eddy Award for Best Student Documentary at the 2005 Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival.
Juniors SCOTT BECK and BRYAN WOODS' trailer "University Heights" won grand prize in MTV's Best Film on Campus: Trailer Challenge Competition. The prize includes a development deal with MTV Films.
BJORN NORDFJORD will join the faculty of the University of Iceland as an
Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies.
KEVIN ESCH, BJORN NORDFJORD & RAY WATKINS successfully completed their PhD defenses.
ASHLEY TRIFFLETTI has had projects screen at Sarah Lawrence College's X-Fest and Toronto's Splice This! Festival. He was awarded Honorable Mention at the US Super 8 Film and Digital Video Festival for the experimental work READING AT THE WINDOW, came in as runner up for the Pro 8mm Prize at the 18fps Silent Speed Festival for an optically printed piece, and has been given an Award of Excellence by the Berkeley Film and Video Festival for the short narrative A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY TALE.
Fall 2004
JASON LIVINGSTON earned his MFA with the completion of Under Foot & Overstory (16mm, 35 mins). He is currently showing the film and wondering what to do next. This might include teaching, programming, traveling, making and more making. Please contact him at pseudovague@mac.com.
TOMMY HAINES and SPENCER GILLIS "Generation Mason" is slated to be completed for screenings by the first of February. Tommy Haines (senior Cinema Major) worked as Assistant Director, Editor, and Actor, and Spencer Gillis (Film Studies graduate student) as Production Sound Mixer, and Actor. The movie website - featuring a trailer, cast photos, crew bios, and production stills - can be found at www.generationmason.com. For more information email info@yuppiedirtball.com. The production was shot in Minneapolis by an independent company called Yuppie Dirtball Productions.
TEGAN RALEIGH, in her final year of the MFA in literary translation program, recently published an essay on Beckett as self-translator in The Norwich Papers. Her translations have also appeared in Metamorphoses and Passport, and some of the results of her collaboration with 2003 visiting IWP writer Matthias Goeritz, from Germany, will appear in Absinthe: New European Writing, next spring.
SCOTT BECK, current University of Iowa sophomore, was one of three finalists in the MTV Best Film on Campus competition. His short film "Shades" was judged by online voters, MTV staff, and directors Joel Schumacher, Gus Van Sant, and Allison Anders. It also aired on the MTVu channel, which is broadcast to 700 universities nationwide. He is currently writing his next feature length screenplay, entitled "Coast," which will tentatively begin shooting Spring 2005.
AARON DOLAZELI has an online internship with Warner Brothers studio, in the interactive marketing department.
IOWA CITY MICROCINEMA, a group organized by graduate students Margo Greenlaw, Jennifer Proctor, Andre Silva, Shannon Silva, and filmmaker Aaron Valdez, received a $2000 grant from the Year of the Arts and Humanities to put on two film events this semester, a 24-Hour Video Race and a screening/workshop with visiting artist Matt McCormick. The 24-Hour Video Race takes place September 18-19 and is open to all area residents with access to a video camera. McCormick, a Portland-based filmmaker and founder of the PDX Film Festival and Peripheral Produce distribution label, will present a screening of his work and a workshop on self-distribution for filmmakers on November 12-13. Details about both events can be found at http://www.icmicrocinema.com
JENNIFER PROCTOR'S video "Surfacing" played this summer along with "Margo," a video collaboration between Proctor and MFA candidate Margo Greenlaw, at the Aurora Picture Show's Extremely Shorts program, curated by Craig Baldwin. "Surfacing" also screened at two other Texas venues, the Dallas Video Festival and Flicker Austin.
JESSE SCHLOTTERBECK, a second year M.A. student, contributed entries on PICTURES OF THE OLD WORLD, LBJ, and THE BATTLE OF CHILE for Routledge's forthcoming Encyclopedia of Documentary Film.
ANDRE SILVA taught digital animation to high school students at a five- week immersion program at Northwestern University this past summer. Currently, Andre is one of the coordinators of the brand new Iowa City Microcinema, which is preparing for its initial event, the "24 hour Video Race" (Sept. 18&19). Andre's short video, "Maps," played, this summer at Bearded Child Film Festival in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
SHANNON SILVA'S short film AND HAPPINESS EVERYWHERE, recently screened at Minnesota's Bearded Child Film Festival and will screen in November at the Milwaukee International Film Festival. She spent the summer shooting her thesis film 31 PLACES I ONCE CALLED HOME in Virginia, North Carolina and Texas. The film explores the multi-layered connections between poverty, family violence, frequent relocation, drug abuse and memory instability. Currently, she is working as a coordinator for the YAH funded Iowa City Microcinema Series (www.icmicrocinema.com)
ASHLEY TRIFFLETTI taught movie making to middle school students this past summer as part of Iowa City's Summer Enrichment program. Two of his recent projects, READING AT THE WINDOW and WALLOWING WEARILY IN WANDER, will play this September at the Antimatter Festival in Vicotria, British Columbia.
Spring 2004 - Summer 2004
NICKY AGATE recently represented the MFA program in Literary Translation on a panel entitled "The World Comes to Iowa," part of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs' annual conference in Chicago.
NICKY AGATE, TEGAN RALEIGH and JAMIE RICHARDS, final year MFA students in translation and co-editors of eXchanges, published the second issue of The University of Iowa's e-journal of literary translation. On the theme of SEX & DEATH, it can be viewed at http://www.uiowa.edu/~xchanges. Issue three, MADNESS & CIVILIZATION, will appear in early June 2004. Submissions are currently being accepted -- see the website for details. BECKA McKAY, currently completing her MFA before commencing a PhD in Comparative Literature, will take over editorship of the journal in 2004-2005.
LAUREN COOK's film, HANDMADE (2004), has screened at the Humboldt Intl Film Festival, Sarah Lawrence XFest, and was included in a curated show at Cineworks in Vancouver. THE FAIR AND THE WEAK (2002) has been awarded Honorable Mention at the Humboldt Intl Film Festival, First Prize at the Oregon Queer Film Festival, and has been screened at over 30 festivals worldwide.
ERIC FREESE directed the 2004 Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival April 2-3, 2004 at Collins Road Theaters Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (more information is available at www.crifilms.com/festival.html).
SPENCER GILLIS will be the Sound Designer/Sound Recorder for Tommy Haines' first feature length movie, under production this summer in Minneapolis.
MARGO GREENLAW'S short documentary WE HAD A LARGE FAMILY was accepted into the Iowa City International Documentary Festival, where it will screen in April. She is currently working on what will be her thesis film--a documentary about a unique forensic anthropological facility in Knoxville, Tennessee, commonly known as the "Body Farm".
TOMMY HAINES, a senior Cinema Major, will be producing a feature length movie this summer called "Generation Mason" in Minneapolis. He is looking to fill 2-3 crew positions, specifically an audio mixer and a couple of PAs (the audio mixer does not need to have extensive qualifications, just an understanding of basic splitting of xlr cables and adjusting levels is sufficient). For more information on Generation Mason visit yuppiedirtball.com. If you are interested in a position contact crew@yuppiedirtball.com or thomas-haines@uiowa.edu
NATHAN HOKS is giving a paper on the Belgian poet and painter Christian Dotremont at the University of Iowa's Craft, Critique, Culture conference this April. He also has poems forthcoming in various literary journals including Crazyhorse, Verse, Conduit and the Columbia Poetry Review.
DENISE KAUFMANN'S film THIS EXISTENCE IS MATERIAL screened at the 42nd Ann Arbor Film Festival and will screen across the U.S. at over 30 venues as a part of the Ann Arbor Festival Tour.
SUSAN KIM ('99) has had her work screened at a variety of festivals and organizations. Most recent screenings were held at the University of Chicago, the Chicago Cultural Center, Ms. Films Festival (Durham, NC), and The 2004 Visual Communications Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film & Video Festival . After editing video and working in non-profit development in Chicago for three years, Susan relocated to Los Angeles in 2003. She is currently enrolled in the MFA Program in Film/Video and the Program in Integrated Media at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA.
DUSTIN MORROW has been teaching at Monmouth College in Illinois since last August.This Fall he will assume a position teaching production at Temple University in Philadelphia.His photographs have been featured in a number of art & culture journals recently, and have been used by the Independent Media Project in a youth voting campaign. He will have his first solo gallery show in the Fall of 2005. His writing on film has appeared recently in "Nova" and "Film Threat," and he will present his research on genre theory and regionalism at the Midwestern ConferenceÊon Literature, Language, and Media. He and his production partner, Seth Camillo, areÊcurrently in post onÊtheir first feature-lengthÊdocumentary film.
JASON NEBERGALL, Cinema student and local man-about-town, will be directing a feature-length motion picture this summer. He will be shooting DV in the Iowa City area and is looking for both cast and crew. If you are at all interested in becoming involved in this enterprise, please email him at jason-nebergall@uiowa.edu for more details.
BILL PALMER directed a campy, blood-soaked horror film called BORN FOR DEATH (35 min), which screened at the Chicago Horror Film Festival on Thursday, April 1st and Saturday, April 3rd. For more information, go to www.chicagohorrorfest.com. One of the film's main stars, Mike Mulcrone, is also an Iowa film student. Bill is also looking for actors/actresses and crew members willing to volunteer for a film shoot this summer on the Chicago's Southside. For more info on what that's all about, check out www.brandtstreetstudio.com.
LAUREN WOOD After completing an internship with Iowa City channel 4 last summer, Lauren was hired into the media pool in January ('04). She plans on working part time in Iowa City as well as for the Coralville Cable Division until her graduation in May. Upon graduation she plans on moving to Chicago to pursue a career in television commercial production.
Spring 2003 - Fall 2003
NICKY AGATE and TEAGA RALIEGH, second year M.F.A. students in Literary Translation and eXchanges co-editors, will talk on translation and electronic publishing at the American Literary Translators Association conference in Cambridge, MA on 12 November 2003. eXchanges is the University of Iowa's literary e-journal devoted to translations both into and out of the English language. Edited by three M.F.A. students in literary translation, it aims to foster cultural interchange and expand awareness of translation as a valid art form. Publishing the source text alongside its translation, we also highlight the symbiotic nature of the process. Current issue and call for submissions at www.uiowa.edu/~xchanges.
JOHNATHAN BURHOP Following an internship for National Geographic in Washington D.C., Jonathan Burhop (BA in Cinema 2002) found work as an Associate Producer for a production company in San Francisco that produces programming for the Discovery Channel. He is aslso pursuing his own independent documentary projects.
LAUREN COOK'S short film THE FAIR AND THE WEAK is currently touring festivals internationally in Brazil, Czech Republic, UK, Canada, Australia and around the country at LadyFest, San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, NYC NewFest, Michigan Women's Music Fest, Ms. Film Fest, and Brooklyn Academy of Music Cinematek Shorts Series. She recently received a grant from Microsoft and Visa to provide FilmArts education for youth, part of which she is using to start a film co-op and Flicker in Iowa City. ÊHer current project, HANDMADE, is a 35mm film contact printed with a flashlight.
DAVID ELLSWORTH'S film SUPER-8 MOM has been awarded: Director's Citation, 2003 Black Maria Film and Video Festival; Honorable Mention, 2003 Hi Mom! Festival and Best Documentary, 2003 U.S. Super-8 Film and Video Festival. He will be attending screenings of Super-8 mom and Hazlo Por Cuba at the Shadow Documentary Festival (www.shadowfestival.nl) in Amsterdam over Thanksgiving break. Additionally, SUPER-8 MOM will air on North Carolina public television as part of their North Carolina visions show on Nov. 22 (http://www.unctv.org/ncvisions/2003/ff/superr8mom.html), and will also be part of the 2003 Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival. Past festival screenings include: the Athens International Film and Video Festival, Antimatter Festival of Short Film and Video, Central Standard Film Festival, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and SXSW Film Festival.
DAVID FISHEL will be having his Honors Thesis Screening on the weekend of December 12. The project is called EXQUISITE CORPSE.
SPENCER GILLIS AND ANDY STOLL (BA 03) were 2 of 50 students selected internationally to participate in the Telluride Film Festival Student Symposium in August in Telluride, Colorado. Symposium members watched US and international premieres of over a dozen films and interacted with filmmakers including Sophia Coppola, Ken Burns, Errol Morris, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall, and Werner Herzog. ÊMore info on the festival is available at www.tellurdiefilmfestival.com.
SABINE HENLIN presented at the IAMHIST (International Association for Media and History) in Leicester, England this summer. In addition, her video CHERCHE (14min, 2002) was programmed at the Cinenatheque Fran?aise in Paris in spring 2003, and she has just completed her first "feminist" short video...called DOMESTIC.
ANDY LEE'S play WHISKEY SOUR was featured at the "10-minute play festival." The play is to be made into a short film over the summer.
JASON LIVINGSTON is working as the Managing Director of Cornell Cinema in Ithaca, NY and has also published two pieces, a review of Scott MacDonald's recent book on personal cinema and the environment for Afterimage, and an interview with Scott Stark in The Squealer. He expects to defend his MFA thesis, UNDER FOOT & OVERSTORY, soon...
DUSTIN MORROW'S recent screenings/performances include: PAPA'S PARTY, designed Video Projection in UI Theater Dept. production, May 2003 LANDING IN LOS ANGELES at 2003 University of Iowa Intermedia Show DIRTY LENS in local show at 2003 Thaw Film Festival TAPE, designed and directed theatrical production, February 2003 DIRTY LENS at the 2003 Ann Arbor Film Festival DIRTY LENS at the 2003 James F. Jacobsen Forum DIRTY LENS at Electric Eye Cinema in Madison, WI INTERFERENCE at the 2002 Cornell Environmental Film Festival For more information about Dustin's work go to http://ddmorrow.tripod.com
ANDRE SILVA'S 16 minute animated film, BEELZEBUB'S BATHTUB was awarded the 2nd prize Juror's Citation at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival. The film was also an official selection of the Mill Valley Film Festival and the was part of the Dallas Video Festival 2002 tour.
SHANNON SILVA'S film THE UNBELIEVABLE ACT OF TOTALLY DISAPPEARING (16mm, 5 min., 2003) screened at Flicker Austin (TX), Flicker Chapel Hill (NC) and the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival (NY) in October. In November it was part of the "Land, Landscape & Reflections on Home: Short Films about Place from the University of Iowa, 1972 to the Present" film screening.
STEVE THEISS graduated in May 2003 (BA in Cinema). He has moved to the St. Louis area and is pursuing production work in the area. Recently Steve was a PA on the pilot documentary REST IN PEACE TV in Springfield, IL, and his screenplay THE LEGEND OF POLO MARCO (written in CCL's fall 2002 Screenwriting class) was a finalist in the St. Louis International Film Festival's Screenplay Competition.
HOPE TUCKER continues to work on THE OBITUARY PROJECT, short films and videos which examine the nature of remembrance. Selections from this project have screened recently in San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, Toronto and New York City. New works appearing later this year: Noel, Nobel, Rosalie, and Accident Report. Hope recently completed THE HISTORY OF THE LEMONANDE STAND, an animated video about, among other things, living and selling and consuming in post-agrarian times.
Summer 2002 and Earlier
DAVID FISHEL In May 2002 David received first place in the local Smoking Ads for the Small Screen Competition with a 30 second non-smoking ad entitled JUST PLAIN RIDICULOUS. And in January 2003, his 16mm film H-POL (Harness the Power of Lightning) recieved Honorable Mention for at the Des Moines Art Center Festival. Most recently, David's THE BREAKFAST SPECIAL and THE WORLD HISTORY OF THE ORANGE were both selected as Cedar Rapids International Film Festival 'official selections'. THE WORLD HISTORY OF THE ORANGE went on to be awarded 'runner up' in the Student Short Form competition. THE BREAKFAST SPECIAL, THE WORLD HISTORY OF THE ORANGE, INSECT FROM HELL, AND LUMBERSCAPE have all been accepted for official selection at the Two Kings Judgment Film Festival in Los Angeles, CA.
JOHN SCHMIT'S "The Power of Coal" screened at the NextFrame Film and Video Festival, 2001 and was selected for the tour package showing in Japan; and screened at the Visualized Film & Video Festival, Denver, CO, 2001. His short video, "The Lawn" screened at the Impakt Festival for Audio-Visual Arts, Netherlands, 2001.
SUSAN KIM reports that In 2001, her film "distance marked" screened at the Chicago Asian American Showcase, Ladyfest Midwest, Women in the Director's Chair, and will soon be screening in the Women in the Director's Chair 2001-2002 12th annual tour.
LYN ELLIOT received the Most Promising FilmmakerAward (with $1000 cash!!) her film "Once" at the Ann Arbor Film Festival 2001
TONY GAULT received an Honorable Mention ($400) for his film "Somewhere, I was Born." at the Ann Arbor Film Festival 2001
REBECCA MEYERS' "How to sleep (winds)" won a Director's Citation in the 2001 Black Maria Film Festival, It was also screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival 2001
JOHANNA HIBBARD, TOM COMERFORD and CATIE WEBSTER had their films screened at Ann Arbor Film Festival 2001
JASON LIVINGSTON'S "The Two Boys" won the Artistic Director's Award for Poet of the Cinema at Cinematexas 2000. This film also played at the On the Waterfront program at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in February 2001.
DAVID ELLSWORTH'S Super-8 collage film "Undivided Attention" shared the Best Experimental prize at the 2001 U.S. Super-8 Film & Video Festival in Rutgers, NJ . It was also screened at South by Southwest Film and Video Festival in Austin, Texas.
LIZ COLE'S "Four Days on the Gulf Coast," will be screened at the 2001 Indie Memphis Festival.
DUSTIN MORROW'S "Passerby" won third place in the music category of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation College Television Awards--the College Emmys.
JOHN SCHMIT writes that he is currently in production on "Underground Power," a documentary about struggle and civil disobedience to share home-produced renewable energy over the power grid. More at: http://home.earthlink.net/~jaslld/gs
JASON LIVINGSTON is finishing his MFA thesis, UNDER FOOT & OVERSTORY, a 16mm experimental nonfiction film set in and around Hickory Hill Park. These 200 acres of land range from overgrown pasture to dense forest to camera-ready vistas. How is it we experience nature in a site so touched by human presence? The outside world must be treated, but there are questions around the status of the so-called personal. His last project, DON'T PANIC - IT'S ORGANIC!, takes on the scientific method, arena rock aesthetics and our romance with the organic. THE TWO BOYS:, a lost footage video from 1999, continues to play around the country. In the meantime, he co-directs Thaw01, Iowa City's springtime festival of radical, remarkable and beguiling moving images.
STEVE FRATTALI (Translation) recently had an essay accepted for a collection on the politics of community. The book is scheduled to appear at the end of the year. The collection as a whole examines the idea of community in contemporary politics and culture from a variety of critical perspectives "My piece, entitled "La Vie dans les Plis", looked at aspects of contemporary American social experience form the standpoint of concepts found in Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and Simone Weil. I am also working on translations of poetry by George Bataille, Georg Trakl, Angelus Silesius, and writing a book -- the first -- on the American surrealist poet Philip Lamantia (who, by the way, I believe also appeared as an actor in pieces by Maya Deren)."
CHRISTINA DRAHOS (Production) says: "I've been living in Los Angeles for the past 5 years. I hope my story can be inspirational to those of you who may fear coming to the city that can eat you alive. Moving out here with no contacts was a difficult endeavor. For the first 6 months I cleaned toilets for Disney corporate housing. I was at my wits end and about ready to rethink my life plan when I finally fell into a production assistant position at a reputable effects house. I busted my butt and trained myself weekends and evenings on the software until they gave me my first break as an official artist on The Fifth Element. I have been working as a visual effects compositor and animator for feature films ever since. Over the past 4 years I have worked on many high profile films. 2000 has been extremely busy for me. I have been working at Digital Domain and you can see my work this year on Xmen, Red Planet and The Grinch. This fall I am relocating to Northern California as a project hire at Industrial Light and Magic (no I'm not giving out any Star Wars secrets so don't even ask..hee hee) If you are in the california area feel free to send me an email tinafx@earthlink.net There is a large network of young Iowa alumni in Los Angeles now, and we would open our arms to any other Iowans with advice, contacts and a beer."
ADAM DICKINSON, May 2000 BA Comm.Studies/BA Comp.Sci., reports: After graduating in the spring of 2000 with a degree in Communication Studies (Production) and in Computer Science, suddenly and almost unexpectedly I landed a job in San Diego as a Playstation video game programmer at RedZone Interactive. Soon after arriving, Sony purchased our small company and we have since joined the larger whole. We are now called the RedZone division of Sony America, where each year we create the next edition of NFL GameDay and NCAA GameBreaker for both the original Playstation and the recently released but hard to find, Playstation 2. Flanked by fellow newcomers to the industry, I am one of the chief programmers of NFL GameDay 2002 for PS1. Specifically, I handle aspects of the game such as AI, Cameras, and Animations. Our work environment is very relaxed, at least until crunch-mode, and we get along almost, but not quite, like college students. Though sometimes the hours are long, but what matters is that we complete our tasks and publish our games. I feel very fortunate to be working here and would not trade it for any other job (yet).
