Montclair State University’s Film Forum brings prominent contemporary filmmakers to campus to screen their films and speak about their work and the profession. Sponsored by the Filmmaking Program of the College of the Arts, the screening and discussion series is held every Tuesday from 5:30 p.m. to 8:50 p.m. in Calcia Hall Room 135, and is free and open to all students and the general public.

As in previous years, the Forum will feature noted industry professionals and filmmakers such as Jonas Thaler, who has done post production work on films such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, and Ramin Bahrani, who has premiered his films at the Venice, Sundance, and Cannes Film Fesivals. The Forum offers a unique opportunity for audiences to hear personal inside stories and to ask questions of some of the most successful and innovative filmmakers working today.

Montclair State University Film Forum
The Visiting Filmmaker Lecture Series

Fall 2008 Schedule

September 16
Christina Soto, Producer/Director/Writer, Muñeca
Christina Soto will show her film Muñeca, a Latino romantic comedy, and talk about self-distribution and life as a Hispanic woman director.

September 23
Ramin Bahrani, Producer/Director/Writer, Chop Shop
Ramin Bahrani’s first feature film, Man Push Cart (2005) premiered at the Venice Film Festival and screened at The Sundance Film Festival before being released. His second feature film Chop Shop (2007) garnered critical acclaim when it premiered that year at the Cannes Film Festival. He is currently in post production on this third feature film, Goodbye, Solo.

September 30
Mary Billyou, Filmmaker
Mary Billyou teaches filmmaking and works professionally as a camera operator and assistant in the film and video industry. She also creates her own films and will be screening several of her experimental films including, The Invalids, 1-9 and Case Study #8.

October 7
Mark Toscano, Film Archivist, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
An archivist at the Academy of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, Mark Toscano will speak about film preservation and rescuing the experimental films of the 1970s. He will also discuss the influence of Hollywood on experimental film work of the same period and will be showing examples.

October 14
Jonas Thaler, Vice President of Post Production, AFG/Walden Media
Jonas Thaler has worked in the film industry as a post production supervisor, editor, assistant editor and a sound and music editor for more than two decades. He was post production supervisor on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, and represented New Line Cinema as post production supervisor on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He will talk about special effects, post production work and his many experiences in the industry.

October 21
Erica Marcus, Independent Filmmaker
A veteran of the radio, television and film industries, Erica Marcus has worked in many capacities in many areas of the world. She will screen and talk about one of her films, Alive in Limbo, which was filmed in Lebanon. Marcus currently works for Link TV.

November 4
Jim Brown, director of Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, speaks about making the only authorized biography of one of the greatest American singer / songwriters of the last century. Pete Seeger was the architect of the folk revival, writing some of its best known songs including “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “Turn, Turn, Turn” and “If I Had A Hammer."

November 4
TBA

November 11
Ronnie Bronstein, Independent Filmmaker, Frownland
Ronnie Bronstein will screen his independent feature film Frownland, which literature from the Museum of Modern Art describes as “a bold and bracing film that is both a savage black comedy and a ragged love letter to an earlier era of independent film.”

November 18
Kathy Brew, Independent Videomaker
Roberto Guerra, Documentary Film Producer/Director/Cinematographer
Collaborators for the past several years, Kathy Brew and Roberto Guerra work together on independent projects related to the arts. They are currently working on several projects including a film on the acclaimed designers Lella and Massimo Vignelli and a film about a Peruvian women’s prison where a beauty contest takes place each year.

November 25
Drake Stutesman, Ph.D., Discussion of Film and Fashion
Drake Stutesman, who edits Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media writes extensively on costume design and fashion. Her articles have appeared in MoMA publications and in Fashioning Stars: Dress, Culture, Identity (British Film Institute, 2005), Schirmer’s Encyclopedia of Film (2006) and If Looks Could Kill: Cinema’s Images of Fashion, Crime and Violence (Koenig Books, 2008), among other publications. She is co-chair of The Women’s Film Preservation Fund.

December 2
Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno and Jerome Bongiorno, Filmmakers
Award-winning filmmakers Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno and Jerome Bongiorno have created fictional and documentary films as well as feature length screenplays. Revolution ’67, their documentary about the 1967 Newark race riots earned the pair a 2008 Eric Barnouw Award for an outstanding documentary film of American History.

December 9
Marc Huestis, co-founder of the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, documentary filmmaker
Interweaving the erotic autobiographies of 15 gay male talking heads with snippets of pornography, filmmaker Marc Huestis created the documentary film Sex Is... as a survey of gay men's attitudes toward coming out, relationships, promiscuity and gay life before and after the AIDS epidemic struck.  This screening is co-sponsored by the Department of Women's and Gender Studies.