Photo Credit: Cameron Moraga
Roy Hathon's short film 'Stealing Kindness' is showing at Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
Caitlin Kelley, Arts Editor
February 1, 2012
Filed under A&E, Arts & Entertainment, Death, Education, Ethics, Events, Local, Movies, Off campus, Uncategorized
The local credibility of two City College student filmmakers has officially been forged with the acceptance of their films into the Santa Barbara International Film Festival for their first time.
?I find myself extremely proud and emotional when [students?] films make it to the program,? said Roger Durling, the executive director of the film festival and a City College film studies instructor.
Both filmmakers have honed their skills through the City College film production department.
Roy Hathon, 25, directed ?Stealing Kindness,? a short film about a kindly man who treats his mugger to a meal. The film was accepted into the festival?s Santa Barbara Shorts Program.
Ali Lassoued, 30, directed ?Grit,? an action/drama about a grieving father who seeks vengeance for his daughter?s death, which was accepted into the Santa Barbara Student Shorts Program.
Shooting ?Grit? took 10 days on a $500 budget, while ?Stealing Kindness? was shot in seven days on a $5,000 budget.
Durling said that exposure to the experiences of film promotion and audience reaction is good for young filmmakers.
Lassoued moved to Santa Barbara from Tunisia in August 2008 as a Fulbright scholar to teach Arabic at UCSB.
?I really wanted to do film for a long time,? Lassoued said. ?And City College was a very affordable and convenient solution for me.?
School has helped in the development of these filmmakers, such as providing a network of people.
?The people that you meet in the two and half years you?re at City College ? are the people you make the connections with,? Hathon said. ?They are the people who are the most reliable and the most valuable.?
Both filmmakers maintain trusting relationships with their collaborators.
Despite the widespread perception of Los Angeles being the mecca of filmmaking, Roy insists on staying in Santa Barbara to keep a reliable group of collaborators as opposed to the dog-eat-dog environment of Los Angeles.
Lassoued has a tight knit crew of four people. The concept for ?Grit? is derived from unspecified events involving the still-living daughters of frequent collaborator and lead actor, Al Keys.
?Ali has a way of hearing information and piecing together different things with it,? Keys said. ?The base of the story was the pain of a parent.?
Hathon and Lassoued?s films overlap in terms of both films being moral stories that are based on actual events.
Hathon?s film is based on a story that he heard on National Public Radio.
?I just get so inspired by these stories that I hear other people say,? Hathon said. ?I just want to share [them].?
Lassoued aims to tap into deep human emotion through the genre of drama. He wants his films to have an earnest emotional effect on the viewer.
?Most of the things you know, especially from human emotion, are from movies,? Lassoued said.
Lassoued said that his ?ultimate goal? is to establish an international network between different cinema genres.
?I?d like to bounce back and forth between the United States and the Middle East,? he added.
For now, Hathon wants to focus on incorporating interesting storytelling in commercials. He doesn?t want to rush into making a feature.
?Maybe that one big feature is all you?re going to do,? Hathon said. ?And what if that one feature goes wrong and it doesn?t amount to anything??
?Stealing Kindness? will premiere at 2 p.m. Thursday at the Lobero Theatre and show at 10:40 a.m. Friday at the Metro 4 Theatre III.
?Grit? premiered at 10:20 p.m. Saturday at Metro 4.
?Print This StorySource: http://www.thechannels.org/uncategorized/2012/02/01/short-films-teach-big-lessons/
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