have supporting roles in
Two River Film Festival
Many community groups
have supporting roles in
Two River Film Festival
By gloria stravelli
Staff Writer
Rosellen Otrakji (third from left), the driving force behind the Two River Film Festival, goes over planning materials with students from Monmouth University, who are serving as interns for the fall festival. The inaugural fund-raiser in suport of the festival’s mission will be held April 25 at Due Process Stables, Colts Neck.
For an impressionable young girl, going to the cinema was a transcendent experience, one that engendered a lifelong love of film.
"My interest in film started at the Lee Theater. It was a big, old theater with crushed red velvet seats," recalled Rosellen Otrakji. "When you walked into the theater, it was grand. There were stanchions with red velvet ropes and a balcony you weren’t allowed to sit in. You waited on line with your family. It was a major event to just go to the movies."
Early on, Otrakji was mesmerized by the sophistication of films by a certain eccentric director.
"I had a very early love for the smartness of Alfred Hitchcock and the Cary Grant films. I loved the glamour and smartness of those films," she confided.
The exotic locales contrasted with her own experience.
"They were about things that were different than the things in my house. The culture, the thinking, the ideas were different," she said.
Ultimately, even her career as an art historian specializing in 16th-century Italian art is an extension of this fascination, she explained.
"For me, media, TV, film and art history were one because they were about image, and they told a story. Film represented imagination, creativity and it was my future," said Otrakji, who, in concert with the communications program at Monmouth University, recently announced the launching of the Two River Film Festival to address the growing need for cultural programming for the community and the funding to support it.
The film festival, scheduled to be held Oct. 10-12 at various local venues, will present quality American and world cinema, including three film premieres — but it is about much more than a celebration of an art form, she noted.
The Two River Film Festival is at heart a community event, focused equally on entertaining, educating and serving the community, at a time when funding cuts threaten to gut many arts and education programs, according to Otrakji.
"I have always seen film and education as partners," she explained. "Every program that comes out of the festival is going to be academically derived and professionally overseen."
Early on, Otrakji forged a partnership with faculty at the Jules J. Plangere Center for Communication and Instructional Technology at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, which will support the festival’s activities and create film-related educational programs.
In addition to screenings, the festival will sponsor ongoing panel discussions with scholars and filmmakers, seminars, symposiums, retrospectives, and will serve as an incubator for educational programs.
Otrakji, who is a member of the board of the Monmouth County Arts Council, was able to tap into a network of contacts to put together a working board for the festival, comprising individuals steeped in community service and members from the worlds of academia, education, finance, media, law, film and the arts.
Many sit on committees focused on areas including education, programming, marketing, and diversity.
"I knew of people in the community involved in solid programs, who got things done, who cared about children and who have the same priorities I have," she explained, "and I called them one by one, and frankly, no one turned me down.
The inaugural fund-raiser to support the festival’s mission will be held April 25 at Due Process Stables in Colts Neck. Proceeds will support festival programs, college scholarships and arts programs for children.
"Basically, I’m asking the community to co-produce this event by getting involved," Otrakji continued. "This project is not about me. It has a life of its own. It is truly about getting things done and using art and the talents of everyone to co-produce this project. If you have a talent, come on board."
Alliances have already been formed with Horizons Student Enrichment Program for disadvantaged children, and Prevention First, which will add its resources to educational programs.
More than 26 undergraduate and graduate students in the university’s communications programs are getting real-world experience as interns working on various aspects of the festival ranging from creating media kits to event planning, work which will earn them three credits.
With the help of curriculum consultants, interns created an educational program about the effects of violence in the media aimed at middle and high school students.
"By the time they’re 18, students view more than 200,000 incidents of violence in film and on TV and 40,000 murders," said Monmouth University junior Anne Halas.
"We made up a packet for a media education curriculum, sent letters to the schools and will give a one-hour presentation Friday," added senior Courtney Atkins, who also is editor of The Outlook, the university’s student-run newspaper. "The festival will address the issue of violence in film. We have fact sheets, quizzes."
"The program points out the difference between something that’s really happening and faked violence," Halas explained.
"That there are consequences," Atkins added, "that when the credits go down, in real life, you’d be going to jail."
Educational curriculum will be shared with school guidance counselors and psychologists prior to presentation, Otrakji noted.
"We’re not just dropping a brochure," she said. "We want feedback, we want this to work and we want longevity on these programs. We are interested in what these children carry away."
The festival is also providing interns with the opportunity to work with film industry professionals. Another outgrowth of the festival will be the April 10 screening of the film Khandahar during the university-sponsored Global Understanding Convention.
Three film premieres are included among the national, regional, independent, classic, animated and short films, retrospectives and documentaries to be screened at the Two River Film Festival at venues chosen to ensure access by a cross-section of the community. These include Clearview Cinema in Red Bank, Atlantic Theater in Atlantic Highlands, the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, and Monmouth University.
Ticket prices will also be accessible to community members, with special discounts for students and seniors; proceeds from the festival will be distributed to support local arts and education programs.
Information on the festival and opportunities to participate in the project, which continues to evolve, is available on the festival Web site designed by Otrakji’s son, John, www.tworiverfilmfestival.com.
In the face of a conflicted world, Otrakji sees the festival as having a unique role.
"I’m hoping the festival will attract people and that they will love film and embrace film.
"Film is something very important at a time like this," she noted. "We have to really open up our thinking and pose to ourselves many, many questions about cultures, and film enables us to do that. Art enables us to do that.
"When you sit and watch a film, you’re getting someone else’s point of view — the director, the writer, the producer — and it comes together and presents a picture. Or you watch a film and you think, ‘I understand that character,’ and you’re touched by it. That is an amazing moment."