Each fall, students of SF State’s Master of Fine Arts Cinema program get a chance to premier their talents through a special screening of short films.

This year the MFA screenings will showcase 10 films by 10 student filmmakers to give the public a chance to see what the three-year graduate program offers.

Among the films are narratives, documentaries, comedies, experimentals and animated shorts. The screenings will be held on Sept. 29 from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. and Sept. 30 from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Coppola Theatre in the Fine Arts Building.

“The MFAs are a great way to meet this new generation of filmmakers and talk to them about their films,” said Terrie Samundra, a 33-year-old graduate student who helped organize the screenings. “It is also a great way to showcase what we can do as a result of what we have learned.”

According to Samundra, MFA students are required to make a short film upon entering the program their first year, as a way to give others a chance to see their work. Samundra’s film, “A Short Tale of Xuan,” will be shown at the event.

The film is a coming-of-age story about a young Vietnamese girl from an immigrant family. She is a young scavenger, who collects objects such as pearls and bottle caps on the street, and develops stories about them. Her imagination blends with reality as she navigates through the world in between childhood and adulthood.

Angela Park, 25, who has just begun her second year in the program, said the students spend their first semester writing the films and doing pre-production work, while shooting the films during winter, and doing post-production in the spring semester.

Samundra explained that SF State’s program is unique because students do a process called “finishing on film,” where they are required to shoot on film for their shorts. The department has made this a requirement for the short films, as a way for the students to gain more experience in real-world filmmaking, according to graduate student Tara Behym, whose film “The Dollhouse” will be showcased at the screenings. Behym said the students are not required to shoot on film for their thesis.

“Some people can shoot their films digitally or put them on DVD, but here we have to shoot and finish on film,” Samundra said.

Park said students are exhausted by the end of the first year because of all the beginning work involved in creating their short films.

This work extends into the spring semester of the second year where students have to
present their theses on their final films to a panel for approval. Students then spend the third year of the program making their theses into films, which are usually screened at the end of the school year.

“The program has an excellent reputation, specifically for independent filmmaking,” said Joel Garber, 27, a graduate student who is showcasing his film “Personal Curator.”

The MFA graduate program was named one of the top cinema programs by Entertainment Weekly in 2000.

As a reflection of the reputation, students have come up with themes for their films, which, according to Samundra, are diverse and unique, exploring such topics as transgender identity, family ties and bigotry.

Graduate Advisor Slava Basovich, 28, took some of his personal life experiences to make his film, titled “The Home Front.” The film is about an Arab-American woman attempting to discover the whereabouts of her missing son, an American soldier fighting in Iraq, while contending with the bigotry directed toward her by her community.

“Every story has a bit of personal experience to it,” Basovich said. “I have a social justice background and I wanted to make a film about the treatment of Arab-Americans in a post-9/11 America.”

Another student who was motivated by a personal topic was Park, who made a film dealing with family, called “Lost and Found Present.”

“Universally, all families have problems,” Park said. “It is really about how you decide to approach the problem and how you handle the problem that matters. This really motivated me and got me thinking so I turned it into a short film.”

In addition to creating a film of her own, Park helped other students with their films and helped organize the screening event in collaboration with Samundra and Kapiolani “Pio” Lee.

Samundra said the MFA Screenings is an event the Bay Area looks forward to each year. She said the screening is huge, and due to the lack of available seating, people often end up standing or sitting in the aisles.

“The films in the screening are dynamic, profound and beautiful,” Samundra said. “They reflect the great artistic diversity coming out of the cinema department at SF State.”