I have been the Co-President of the Indiana Student Cinema Guild since 2016. Our biggest event of the fall semester is the Crimson Film Festival. Crimson takes place on Monday, December 11th at 7:00 p.m at the Indiana University Cinema. It is the largest fall festival of student content at Indiana University. Then-president Jacob Gabbard created the Crimson Film Festival in 2013 to celebrate the vivid and diverse nature of IU’s filmmaker community.
This year’s program of 10 short films includes new work by previous contributors. Cinema Guild Co-President Jacob Schorr, who wrote and directed last year’s short film The Bigfoot Hunters, has a new short action-comedy in the festival called The Delivery Boy. Zachary Zurcher, whose science fiction film No Perro played at the 2016 Crimson Film Festival, returns with a new science fiction film called Post Man.
We have an eclectic mixture of different types of films this year. Some of them, including Black by director Jeremy Tatara, are avant-garde and push forward film’s potential as a medium. Other films are more narrative-based, including my short films Don’t Look Back and Balloon.
One of my favorite memories of the Crimson Film Festival happened in 2015. After the awards were given, everyone poured out of the IU Cinema into the area in front of the Hoagy Carmichael statue. We could’ve gone home, but instead we stayed and talked. We talked about what we’d seen, and about life, and how we were going to spend our winter breaks. I felt the beautiful sensation of being a part of a community. Not just any community, either, but a community of people who’d brave a cold December night to spend their time supporting their friends’ art. I’ve made some wonderful memories at the Crimson Film Festival, and this year I hope you will too.
This year’s Crimson Film Festival will happen on December 11th at 7 pm. We’d love to have you come and support student film!
Jesse Pasternack is a senior at Indiana University and the co-president of the Indiana Student Cinema Guild. He writes about film, television, and pop culture for the Indiana Daily Student. Jesse is a moderator at Michael Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival and a friend of the Doug Loves Movies podcast. He has directed six short films.