SCA students’ shorts to be screened at LA film festival

Five graduate students from the School of Cinematic Arts will have their shorts screened at the DTLA Film Festival. The event will from Sept. 21 to 30 at L.A. Live’s Regal Cinema, and the five USC shorts, along with five from UCLA students, will be screened on Sept. 24 at 2 p.m.

USC Cinematic Arts professor and festival programmer Bita Shafipour picked the five films, using a 12-person shortlist she helped create as a member of the SCA scholarship committee.

She’s proud of the group’s diversity, including a 50/50 split of male and female directors, with roots from across the world, including Germany, Mexico, Brazil, India and the Caribbean.

“The fact that the festival is local is very special … it is 9 years old, well-established, very progressive and honors independent voice,” Shafipour said. “Most of the students come from that progressive [view]. At this stage they’re very fresh and unique, so the fact that we can honor that is very special.”

The festival is special for Nicole Danser, as it is her second-ever screening. Danser’s short, “F*#@k,” details the rise and fall of a relationship, tied together with circumstances that would often elicit the expletive.

Danser’s creative process can be messy — usually, her ideas for projects like “F*#@k” come to her in class when a professor starts listing due dates, kicking her brain into overdrive.

“I like thinking up ideas, developing it, brainstorming. And then I like the very end because you get to see the product,” Danser said. “Being able to know that you helped create the idea and then knowing that it has been produced and other people are watching it [is my favorite part], [knowing] something that is in your mind is now in reality.”

For director Kevin Alexander Gallo, personal life heavily influences his filmmaking. His short, “Morgan in Maywood,” details the story of a teenage boy, Morgan, caught in a love affair with his boss and the ensuing path to self-worth after he discovers his boss has a wife and family. It is set in Gallo’s home state of New Jersey, the inspiration and backdrop for many of his films.

“It’s my belief that you don’t have to overtly make films about politics or current events in order for it to have a political standpoint,” Gallo said. “So I draw a lot from my life, being queer, being Latino, and just like personal experience.”

Ronald Trejo also hopes the audience of his short, “Teacto,” gain more than just entertainment. The film follows a recovering alcoholic who struggles to take control of his life, inspired in part by Trejo’s family members who have dealt with alcoholism. Through the narrative, he thinks viewers will recognize that even in times of strength, faults exist.

“In that plateau of happiness, whether it’s like ‘I want to buy a house’ or ‘I want to graduate from school,’ it may be the happiest time of your life but there might be that tipping point of chaos or losing control,” Trejo said. “And that’s really what I’m trying to say with this story, that there’s chaos in happiness.”

Like Trejo, Sadé Joseph wants the audience to experience new perspective from her short, “Good Girl.” A coming-of-age story following a Jamaican American teenager, “Good Girl” is loosely based on Joseph’s own childhood as the daughter of Caribbean American immigrants.

She hopes by expressing her unique perspectives, the film allows viewers to see an often-ignored viewpoint.

“I think Caribbean American voices are particularly lacking in the industry, and it is a very specific identity and experience,” Joseph said. “I think people kind of group black people or black Americans into one group here, but the diaspora is so vast and so wide, and the black experience can be told in so many different ways.”

Starting a conversation, not just opening minds, is Sohil Vaidya’s wish for his short, “Geeta.” The piece confronts the issue of modern-day slavery through the lens of an Indian couple who brings their maid, essentially a slave, to the United States.

Vaidya wants the audience to journey with the maid on her path to freedom.

“[Modern-day slavery] has taken so many different forms that sometimes it’s not obvious as we see it in the movies — like ‘Oh yeah, somebody is being beaten.’ But [the maid] still a slave,” Vaidya said. “In the real life I see exploiters who are really exploiters but they don’t realize that they are, and I think if they see this film, I think they will be able to identify themselves. That was the whole point.”