The ACTC Film Festival celebrates ACTC students’ filmmaking. This year, three Macalester students were represented.
Elizabeth Hutchins ’16
Rockledge, Fla.
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My love for the art of videomaking truly blossomed in 2011 when I created “Red Hen and Bald Eagle,” a claymation to celebrate my grandparents’ 30th wedding anniversary. Since coming to Mac, my interest in the visual medium and film theories has only grown exponentially. I thoroughly enjoyed synthesizing my knowledge to create “What Makes A Good College Student?,” a final film project for MCST-294 Oppositional Cinemas. All elements combine to analyze the rhetoric behind an instructional video. Furthermore, I critique the culture of non-conformity conformity that Macalester students promote by presenting satirical scenarios that expose the ridiculousness of many of these ideals (mostly in a humorous manner) while drawing on filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage, Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, Craig Baldwin, and Maya Deren for inspiration.
Mackenzie Martin ’16
Wausau, Wis.
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In the spirit of full disclosure, my film was an assignment for Film Analysis & Visual Culture and also the first time I played with film. At the time, I was also writing a paper about Wes Anderson and “indiewood cinema” which definitely influenced it to be satirical in the sense that it’s a little “too quirky,” if you know what I mean. It’s definitely not a serious video whatsoever, nor was it able to have much of a plot as a result of its maximum two-minute length for class.

Sarah Olander ’15
Vadnais Heights, Minn.

I studied abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and chose that program because it had a film studies concentration. I’ve wanted to experiment with film making for a long time, so spending an entire semester devoted to film making and film studies sounded great. The assignment was for a class called Representations of Buenos Aires and was open to interpretation. By the end of the semester we needed to complete a short film that represented for us what it was like to be abroad in Buenos Aires, and after filming intermittently over the course of the semester I ended up with an amalgamation of short clips that did not have a narrative structure. I decided to make an abstract film that loosely tells the story of a girl remembering various moments from her time abroad. I’m a senior MCST major with a strong interest in film, video, and media production. I loved the process of making this short film and the experience has led me to pursue film production as a potential career.

January 13 2015

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