In the many departments found across Keene State College, you will find a lot of different professors who help to guide students in best honing their respective crafts through advice, guidance and criticism when needed. Occasionally, however, these roles can be reversed.
Emily Perry / Equinox staff
A KSC film curating class helped put together and present films created by faculty who had backgrounds in film and art. Held on Thursday, Nov. 30, the 80-minute screening Faculty Projects showed works from seven different faculty members. The films spanned across the genres, from animation, documentary, comedy and experimental film.
KSC film professor Dr. Irina Leimbacher oversaw and taught the curation class, noting how this semester was only the second time the class had been taught. Leimbacher said she created the class in part to start a course that was associated with the Film Society on campus, and to professionalize it in a way.
“For production students, I think it is really important to understand the exhibition aspect of film, and that part of the film is how you see it,” Leimbacher said, when asked what it was like to work with students from all different branches of film study to coordinate the event. She stressed the importance she held in having students view films in a group on the big screen, to experience them in a different way than they would at home on their computers.
KSC senior and double major with critical film studies and film production Colin Acker was one of the students in Liembachers’ film curating class who helped to set up the screening, and said the night went wonderfully. Acker said the class helps to set up screenings in the Putnam Theatre on campus each week, organize advertising in the form of posters, WKNH advertising or fliers, and to also help run the reception and events the night of.
When asked about how curating events such as the Faculty Projection has helped to push him further in his majors, Acker said, “It kind of defines how we view our films…it’s about the experience of viewing a film, and how to make that better for an audience. That’s what curating is.”
Acker expressed his happiness with the screening, and noted that the night’s “packed house” was the highest attended event he had noticed yet.
Acker also said how he appreciated the feedback that faculty film makers where seeking from the film students prior to the event. “For once they were asking us about their films instead,” Acker said, “It was interesting to have that role-reversal. It was a novel feeling.”
KSC film professors Ted White and Debra White-Stanley were just two of the professors who had films in the screening.
Ted White shared his comedic film “My Three Cocks,” a film done in almost a home-video kind of way, starring the macho showdowns between himself and the three roosters, whom he had raised alongside his hens at home, all the while collecting video footage over the years.
White-Stanley begun to delve in the medium of film only in the past year and a half or so. Her film, “The Bowl People,” a documentary-esque style film on a business that hand makes wooden bowls, was in the screening.
“It’s quite a learning curve,” White-Stanley said. “There quite a lot to learn. I could be studying this intensively for decades there would still me more to learn… It’s brought me a lot of joy.”
Meridith King can be contacted at mking@kscequinox.com
