Author: Taylor-Anne Esparza
With dusk, luminaries and colorful lighting, the atmosphere was set perfectly for Oxy Freewaves’ presentation of Sub/Culture, a showcase of student documentaries. Seven students in Professor Broderick Fox’s course “Projects in Documentary Video” filmed, produced and edited their own documentary short films over the course of a semester and debuted them last Friday evening in front of the Arthur G. Coons Administrative Building. The class collaborated with Freewaves, a Los Angeles-based art and media organization, to include a greater variety of works in the event.
Fox discussed the class’s goal with the project and his hopes for the audience’s reception. “We wanted to invent an experience to bring people together around these works,” Fox said. “In a nutshell, [the students] are asking people to explore different communities and to explore culture. For a city as diverse and big as L.A., we may have a certain image of the dominant culture, but it’s really a mix.”
Psychology and French double major Madeleine Holtz (sophomore) filmed and produced “It’s Just Hair.” In this short piece, Holtz chose to explore the choice of six Occidental women to cut their hair shorter than the social feminine norm and investigated how and if this decision has affected other aspects of their lives. She spoke about the event and her elation with the progress and product her class created.
“My class put an immense amount of time and effort into the creation of our films and the event itself,” Holtz said. “It’s fantastic to see that we’ve come all this way and we’ve been able to pull it off.”
Holtz’s documentary welcomed the audience into the lives of these women and showed each of their experiences with public reaction and personal transformation.
Another student in Fox’s class, Media Arts and Culture (MAC) and sociology double major Ryan Metzler (junior), produced “New/Nuclear Family,” which focuses on the ideal of the nuclear family. The filmmaker questions the transformation, or lack thereof, in the familial structure since the 1950s. The documentary includes a lively portrayal of media and entertainment from the ’50s and shows the influence it had on the perspectives of the people. Metzler artistically contrasts the patriarchal mid-century family image with current interviews revolving around how the image of the family is slowly expanding.
As a MAC major, Metzler is grateful to partake in in Sub/Culture before his final year at Occidental. “Being able to participate and lead in all aspects of the production process is truly a worthwhile experience that has ultimately prepared me for the Senior Comps project this fall,” Metzler said. “This class has further encouraged me to pursue a career in documentary film-making.”
The class exceeded the difficult tasks of producing and showing their documentaries and even took the initiative to create an online space to promote awareness of the event. The students generated a blog on tumblr, oxyfreewaves2013.tumblr.com, which extended the objective and message of Freewaves to a larger audience.
“They wanted to make a space where the conversation could continue,” Fox said. “Where the event can be archived, people can create new versions, watch the films and give feedback.”
Throughout the night, about 75 students, staff and members of the community joined in the event, enjoying the light snacks, beverages and endless entertainment. The night was a success with the exuberant applause the audience continuously supplied and the diversity of both the filmmakers and their documentaries.
This article has been archived, for more requests please contact us via the support system.
