Foreign flicks: International Student Film Festival gives young foreign filmmakers big break

by Joannah Nwokeabia VCU NEWS
Issue date: 4/14/05 

While working on a documentary about the hugely successful VCU French Film Festival, Scott DuPre Mills, instructor in the Department of Photography and Film, conceived the idea of bringing films shot by students around the world to the VCU's diverse audience. Thus, the International Student Film Festival was born. 

Mills, the festival's founder and director, contacted hundreds of schools and professors in several countries to locate student filmmakers. Initially, he said he wanted to expose filmmaking students to films made by their foreign peers.

"I wanted to do it for the film students, so they can have an opportunity to see films that are being made by students from around the world," Mills said.

A teacher in the 26-day Summer Education Abroad Program to Peru, Mills described his students experiencing a new and enriching way of life in Peru. One of Mills' film students, a native of Thailand who now teaches at a film school in his homeland, submitted one of his students' film to the festival. 

"I hope to develop more relationships like that," Mills said.

Mills won't have to look too far. This year's festival features 11 films from Austria, Italy, Germany, Israel, Canada, Australia and India, to name a few. 

"We want to bring more attention to filmmaking, but also the international experience of it," he said. 

Mills plans on making the film festival, in its first year, an annual event. One has to wonder, in a university that prides itself on being one of the most multicultural schools in Virginia, what took so long? 

by Wayne Melton

Scott DuPre Mills is about to found Richmond’s next film festival, The VCU International Student Film Festival, scheduled for April 14 at the Grace Street Theater. If you haven’t met him in a film class at VCU, you might have seen him with his band, Los 10 Space, which has been playing a fusion of rock, electronica and jazz in local clubs since 1986. Why he’s hot: Mills, whose favorite director is Stanley Kubrick, got the idea for the festival while leading a study-abroad class in Peru. The VCU sculpture graduate says he was inspired while working with VCU’s annual French Film Festival and seeing its importance to both Richmond and France. Mills wants it to be easy for filmmakers to submit work to the festival, especially first-timers. He’s done away with entry fees and has worked to avoid the “nit-picking” rules and bureaucratic red tape that he says are usually associated with festivals. The festival accepts all film formats, and it will be responsible for all changes and formatting, including subtitles when necessary.

“Sometimes students feel like underdogs,” Mills says. “If I’m going to be at this school, I’d like to see [the film program] get bigger. ... Hopefully this festival will contribute to the growing film scene in Richmond.” 

To that end, Mills has an eye to the future, even though he is still knee-deep in the trial run. He’d like to fully integrate cutting-edge technology, allowing online submitting and judging, two things he’s already tried this year in special cases. Inviting an international community of filmmakers to VCU is also an important part of the festival he says, as is including the university’s current students. One of his three student co-directors has Palestinian roots, and one has Japanese roots. And he hopes to involve VCU’s international students and the university’s department of international education. “I really want to make this a 21st-century festival,” he says.

What’s next: Mills has his work cut out for him. He is allowing a late deadline of April 1, just half a month before the event. He’s producing a documentary on last year’s French Film Festival and since 1999 has been working on a feature-length, stop-motion animation film called “The Walrus.” — Wayne Melton