For the second consecutive year, SFTV and BCLA partnered with Los Angeles Greek Film Festival (LAGFF), where sixteen students interned in conjunction with Professor of Classics Dr. Katerina Zacharia‘s “Representations of Greece: Ancient and Modern” course during the spring semester, and three more with the Greek cinema course during the summer semester. SFTV professor Mikael Kreuzriegler (PROD) and chair and professor of Recording Arts Mladen Milicevic served as jury members for the shorts program at the festival, held at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood June 5, 2016.
Dr. Zacharia and her student interns collectively watched over 160 films and assisted in the final selections at LAGFF this year, as well as reviewed International Project Discovery Forum (IPDF) portfolios, offered outreach and social media tasks, and interviewed Greek filmmakers, economists, and LAGFF directors. Dr. Zacharia also brought her students from the Greek cinema summer course to the LAGFF, and engaged two more interns to work with the IPDF, as well as her Rains Research assistant.
Out of the nineteen LMU-LAGFF interns this year, seven came from SFTV, including: Jake Trokey (PROD ’17), Nick Logsdon (SCWR ’16), Gatsby Keyes (SCWR ’18), Joseph Bellavia (SCWR ’19), Gabriela Garza-Lainez (PROD ’17), Samantha Burton (PROD and Classics & Archeology ’19), and Amy Pellouchoud (PROD ’18).
“My favorite part of the festival was the Diversity Panel, which was hosted by the International Project Discovery Forum,” said intern and SFTV junior Amy Pellouchoud. “Hearing experts in the industry talk about their experiences with diversity on screen and behind the scenes was eye-opening.”
Two Honors freshmen, including SFTV’s Samantha Burton (double major in Film Production and Classics & Archaeology), received the 2016 Honors Summer Fellowships, an award of $5,000 each to travel to Greece in May and work with Dr. Zacharia on their projects on different aspects of the tourism industry and branding of Greece during the last decade and since the financial crisis in 2008.
Check out the class blog, which includes presentations, interviews and more here.
Dr. Katerina Zacharia has been teaching Greek cinema for over 15 years at LMU; she published “Reel Hellenisms”: Perceptions of Greece in Greek Cinema” (2008); offered the LAGFF Memorial lecture Retrospective on Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos (2012); served in the 2014 LAGFF jury committee, and now is the LAGFF Director of Education and Culture (2015-). LMU School of Film and Television and the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts became community partners with LAGFF with the first internship in 2014, five internships in 2015, and 19 internships in 2016. LAGFF designated an LMU Special Selection slot at 10 pm on Saturday, June 4th 2016.
