PRINCETON: Young filmmakers show their work at annual festival

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
   As the lights went down inside the Princeton Library Thursday night, the first of 12 short films or videos appeared on a large screen.
   For more than two hours, film lovers got to watch works by a young generation of American and foreign filmmakers at the ninth annual Princeton Student Film & Video Festival.
   Held on back-to-back nights July 18 and July 19, the event featured 25 pieces by high school and college filmmakers who are between 14 and 25 years old. This year, 104 submissions were entered, including pieces by filmmakers from Europe, Hong Kong and Ireland, said Susan Conlon, director of the festival and librarian at the Princeton Library.
   ”To grow it, it’s a matter of doing a lot of outreach, reaching out to the local high schools and colleges here in New Jersey but also reaching to colleges all over the country with film programs,” said Ms. Conlon, wearing a black T-shirt from the 2008 festival.
   The genres ran the gamut: dramas, comedies, cartoons and documentaries. A screening committee that includes Ms. Conlon and 12 others looks at the films, seeking to have a diversity of works for the festival.
   ”These are some of the best films we’ve ever seen in one year. We had films that we did not include that in other years were easy yesses,” she said.
   In discussing the films, Ms. Conlon noted one of themes is uncertainty about the future.
   ”The films are fun and they’re edgy and they’re really creative and they’re cool. But it’s also evident that filmmakers have . . . pretty deep thoughts,” she said.
   Pennington resident Hannah Epstein, a recent graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont, showed her short documentary that dealt with her mother Terri’s successful battle with cancer. Terri Epstein is the only person who speaks or appears in the piece.
   Ms. Epstein, speaking Thursday before the last night of the festival, explained that she took her inspiration for her project from the work of Irish-filmmaker Ken Wardrop.
   ”I’m hoping that it comes across as a survival story, but I guess my goal was to give it a little bit of a spin so it’s not just another survival story,” Ms. Epstein said. “But I guess it’s not just about positives. It also reflects on the difficulties that we had talking to each other about it, and then how she would handle being sick again differently or not.”
   ”It was actually a welcome opportunity to talk about what I had been through,” said Terri Epstein, who attended the festival with other members of the family.
   One filmmaker has been entering films since he was a student at Princeton High School. Bob Venanzi, a recent graduate of Temple University, submitted a nearly 17- minute video that he and his twin brother, Sam, made about the underground music scene in New Brunswick.
   Mr. Venanzi said he enjoys coming back to see the work of other filmmakers, also noting that the festival is a good networking opportunity.
   ”I think for anybody who’s coming here who’s making films — an aspiring filmmaker — they can hear what their relative peers are saying and get a lot of great ideas and resources,” Ms. Conlon said.