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THE LONG ISLANDER, THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2004
Volume 165, Issue 48"Peace And Consciousness" Film Fest
By Aliza Israel
aisrael@longislandernews.comThe last weeks of August are noted for their intense heat, but the intense fervor of C.A.M.P. Festival participantes is what will make this month memorable at the Cinema Arts Centre. Students and professionals will pack into the Sky Room of this Huntington establishment to learn what it takes to put alternative ideas on the screen.
This year's theme is "Peace and Consiousness," a title fueled by its growing need within the realms of international awareness and relations.
"Watching the television and having all that fear and anxiety, we wanted to break that and show what really should be on the screen," said Alexia Anastasio, 23 festival coordinator and Northport High School graduate.
"I think community and education is the most important mission for the festival. To spread the optimism that you can go out and make a film that has alternative scenes, and is experimental."
C.A.M.P. stands for Cinema, Arts, Music and Politics, and the festival entails six days of instructional sessions to teach filmmakers - both established and aspiring - the ways in which to express alternative themes.
"All the films and all the workshops will be really aimed at assisting people who want to do documentaries about political issues," said Charlotte Sky, co-director of the Cinema Arts Centre. "They'll be working with people in workshops who have already done these types of films, learning how to do them, how to promote them and how to make them. And they'll be able to discuss the content of the films that have already been made by the filmmakers."
Numerous film screenings, discussion periods, hands-on activities and art and photography viewings will comprise the six days, extending from August 22 to August 27.
Anastasio said C.A.M.P. is a traveling festival - its stops include one in Cannes, France in May - with origins stemming back to her senior project at the State University of New York at Purchase. "I got together musicians ... and filmmakers that I've worked with in distribution companies, industry speakers, artists and also people from the Lost Film Festival," she said. "It was an all day event, and
a film festival by night."The Cinema Arts Centre is currently offering 16 visiting industry speakers, including Northport graduates Charles Hutcheon and William Zachary Stipe who are presenting their 16-minute narrative, United We Fall .
"It basically [involves] everyone watching television in America [when], one night, the signal's interrupted, and a man starts giving a speech about how we've sedated ourselves with television and how ultimately our lives up until now have led to the decline of our society," Hutcheon said. "It basically shows that television is a powerful sedative and a dangerous tool to our society." He said Stipe, a recent graduate of Ithaca College, contacted him for help on the project that was originally his senior film.
"I just kind of made the movie to make a statement without having really thought through forms for displaying it, but it's important to have a soapbox that people can get up on and have their message
heard," Stipe said, especially if their theme is more against the mainstream."Anastasio said she hopes to follow the viewing with a hands-on activity, involving two groups, two camera and three teachers. "We're thinking a lot of younger people will attend this [short video] night,
as young as middle school to high school [students]. You just split them up into groups and give them projects."It's basically how I learned in college, too."
Anastasio said she also favors the Andrea Sadler's film, entitled The Sacred Run: The Lotus And The Feather, about an annual event started in 1978 to strengthen Native culture; it is now an international event involving indigenous people from Canada, the United States and Japan who are joined by individuals from 13 countries to engage in a 4,000 kilometer run along the Sea of Japan.
Another feature film is entitled, Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election - 2004 Edition and chronicles the complications involving Florida ballots in the 200 Presidental election, while surmising
potential voter fraud in the upcoming November election.Sky said the Cinema Arts Centre is only subsidizing transportation and food for each presenter. "There won't be any cost for their films or for the people who are going to be doing the presentations," she said. "They're all giving very generously of themselves because they believe in the project, and are hoping it will catch on and continue.
"They're hoping to attract a lot of young people, as well, and that's why it's being done at this time of year - because a lot of people are not in school."
Sky said this is the first C.A.M.P. Festival held at the Centre, but she is interested in holding them annually if successful. Cinema Arts Centre members and students will be charged $12 per day for the 2004 festival, all others will be charges $15.
Photo (Alexia and Matie at Cannes in front of Le SunSet)
caption: Alexia Anastasio and co-programmer Matie Argiropouls in
Cannes, France at C.A.M.P. Festival, May 2004.