(Doucette Hall, Edinboro, PA – March 20, 2025)
This month, PennWest’s Digital Filmmaking and Photography (aka “Philm”) program crossed an important threshold. In the last six years, films made by its students have earned more than one hundred festival and competition accolades.
“There’s no shame in reshooting scenes if you’re not satisfied with them,” said senior Brett Borland. As in other studio arts, filmmaking projects are important opportunities for repetitive, exercise-based skills training. They’re significant contributions to an academic transcript. But off-campus judges and adjudicators – standing outside a circle of supportive faculty, family and friends – assess the finished product with a more objective level of scrutiny and critique.
The Philm strategy for recognition is uncomplicated: the final assignment in every class at the 3000- and 4000-level is a one-year marketing and distribution plan for festival and competition entries. The plan includes local, regional, national, and international competitions of varying prestige. PennWest student films target competitions based on three criteria: content, personnel, and form.
Chocolaterie: The Flavor of a Town was made by students enrolled in the FA23 offering of ART 3205, Non-Fiction Filmmaking. Director Jacob Feiock watched “the crew grow into amazing, on-set filmmakers that knew their jobs and how to execute them with precision.” Producer Lizzy Joseph led a team that followed local confectioner Sandy Steinheiser through the process of making salted caramels. The fit of content and competition made its wins at the Royal Cocoa Film Festival in Osun, Nigeria and at the Bergamo, Italy Food Film Fest almost predictable.
A year earlier, Madison Kuhn directed Alla Prima, a profile of PennWest painting student Delaney Maitland. Featuring creative women in front of and behind the camera, it made sense to enter the film in the Kollywood International Film Festival in Tamilnadu, India, where it was named Best Women’s Film.
Finally, a film’s formal elements may be deciding factors in its competition calendar. Mastering the Grain (a documentary about a graduate woodworker) and Alexas from Texas (a futuristic narrative about electronic surveillance) have both been selected for short film festivals which limit entrants’ running times. Other festivals seek entries within a certain budget range, aspect ratio, or other technical specification.
The results have been impressive. Even during the COVID pandemic and lock-down, Edinboro filmmaking students continued to make movies and win awards. The trophy count is 109 and rising. It now includes awards for still photography as well as motion pictures.
“Competition is an important emphasis for our program,” said Filmmaking professor Brian Fuller. “A film like The Dollhouse wins awards in Copenhagen, Tokyo, and Paris. The Damsel Trope is screened in Toronto and Moscow. Or a photograph like Great Nation is a finalist in San Francisco. Those are powerful lines on a résumé. That kind of thing makes an employer stop and ask questions. Sure, it’s important to cultivate social media followers, but having industry professionals and successful artists judge and reward your work, that makes a job application float a little higher in the pile.”
Track the growing list of awards at philm.school/laurels.