
Boston University held a film screening Friday night to showcase thesis movies created by students in the Masters of Fine Arts in Cinema and Media Production program in the College of Communication.
The department made several changes to its program last year, taking a more collaborative approach in which students studying different areas of filmmaking work together to create their films.
Approximately 100 BU community members gathered in the Tsai Performance Center to attend the screening, which showcased five films made by student producers, directors, writers and cinematographers.
The films, including “Homecoming,” “Please Believe Me,” “Borderline,” “No Really, It’s Fine” and “Over His Dead Body,” ranged in genres from dark drama to heartfelt comedy, and showed a wide array of filmmaking techniques.
Paul Schneider, chairman of the Department of Film and Television, said the program is a unique one because of its focus on collaboration.
“The thing that really makes us different than pretty much all the other graduate film programs in the country is that our tracks, instead of being in separate boxes — our students in these different boxes work together,” Schneider said. “We’re modeling the way things are in the real world. That’s what makes it special.”
The faculty also takes a collaborative approach, using team-teaching techniques that help integrate students in the classroom, Schneider said.
“[These students] have blazed a path in what we hope will become one of the top programs in the country,” Schneider said.
Pedro Peres, the director of “Please Believe Me,” said the program allows students to spend a full year on their films — the first semester of which is spent planning and deciding on a story.
“We shoot everything in the summer, and by the end of the summer, we have something close to done,” Peres, a first-year student in the MFA program, said after the screening. “Now, we’re kind of still working on it and giving it the final touches.”
Peres said he appreciated that the program takes a collaborative approach to teaching its students.
“It’s cliché to say, but a collaborative medium — it’s the way it works and it’s the best way to learn,” he said “It’s a great way to meet people and get close with them. There’s no better way to do that.”
Peres’ film told the story of a 16-year-old girl who desperately wants her mother’s affection, but her mother is distracted by a new boyfriend. She goes to extremes to get her mother’s attention, and the film’s ending is somewhat dark.
“For my film, I want there to be a very visceral response to it,” Peres said. “I want [the audience] to feel it — to really relate with my character. She goes on an emotional roller coaster and I want to take the audience on that emotional roller coaster as well.”
After the screening, others who attended said they were impressed by the student films.
“I thought they were all really well done,” said Aaron Wong, a junior in the College of Communication. “It looks like the filmmakers took a lot of time and there was a lot of passion in the project for all of them.”
Nicolette Forsey-Smerek, also a COM junior, echoed similar thoughts. She said her favorite film was “No Really It’s Fine,” a story about how a woman censors her feelings from others.
“It was really well shot, and I liked the story,” Forsey-Smerek said.
Jack Garrett, a BU alumnus who graduated from the program in 2014, said he has attended several similar thesis screenings and has seen large improvements in the program.
“I think they’re taking more risks while also managing to tell a cohesive story at the same time,” Garrett said, “and that’s pretty nice.”