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UNC student productions are coming to the big screen at the Varsity

Swain Lot

Filmgoers watching movies presented during the Swain Lot Film Festival.

Photo courtesy of Nicholas Bafia

For UNC students, many classes involve the production of demanding projects for success. These projects often serve no other purpose other than for the grade on a transcript. However, on April 13, the Swain Lot Film Festival returns to the Varsity Theatre, challenging this notion by offering a platform for students to showcase their video projects.

The Swain Lot Film Festival is entirely student-run and the films shown are entirely student-produced. The festival accepts submissions produced within the past year from UNC students of all majors. Films range in length, with a maximum run time of 20 minutes. The submissions are reviewed by a select panel of faculty and student judges who pick the top pieces, which are then screened at the Varsity Theatre for the showcase. 

Nicholas Bafia, senior representative for the Swain Lot Film Festival, said the pieces touch on a multitude of subjects. Submissions can come from introductory communication classes, music videos, or even documentaries. 

Bafia said the goal of the film festival is to promote and showcase the hard work of students producing films throughout the year. Originally, the film festival showcased only the work from communications majors. The name of the festival comes from Swain Hall, which houses the communications department and the Swain Hall parking lot. The first film festival was held in this parking lot with a projector and folding chairs. 

Now, the festival has expanded in size by moving to the Varsity Theatre and in content by accepting submissions from all majors. The expansion increases the diversity of the festival, in that the works of students across a wide spectrum of majors are represented and shared with the rest of the community. 

“In the past couple years we have expanded to include the entire student community because it’s not just the communications majors who are making movies and films and stuff like that, it’s the greater body,” Bafia said. “It’s a good platform to showcase works.” 

UNC senior Hannah Strickland attended the Swain Lot Film Festival last year. She said she remembers the wide range of topics explored at the event. 

“Some of them were student life, there were some that were a little more experimental,” Strickland said. “I remember one particularly showed the human body and movement and how that worked, and that was really neat and really visually interesting.” 

Strickland said she enjoyed this event because it allowed her to support student work on campus that often does not get the recognition or appreciation it deserves. 

“It was a really fun opportunity to go out and support friends and student film in general, because it’s something that really gets overlooked on our campus a lot,” Strickland said. “There is not a huge network of support for that, and it’s a really great way to go out and see what happening on campus because the arts in general are overlooked.”

Senior Zavier Taylor is highly involved in the communications department at UNC, and he submitted to the Swain Lot Film Festival this year. Taylor said the festival offers students a unique opportunity for their work to be shown to a broad audience. 

“I think it definitely offers a relatively free way to get your ideas out there, and to see your work on the big screen really makes a difference,” Taylor said. “There is not a huge difference between something you make on YouTube and post and something you submit to the Swain Lot Film Festival, except that it’s shown in front of people in a theater and you get that experience, and I think that’s very difficult to do, especially for people of our experience level.”

Taylor said that he encourages students considering a film project to use the resources on UNC’s campus. 

“A lot of people who think, ‘I want to make something but I don’t know where to start,’ you can just check out a camera, you can open up (Adobe) Premiere, you can check out some time in the audio booth…” Taylor said. “It’s definitely a lot easier to get started than I think people realize.” 

arts@dailytarheel.com

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