Amidst whining sirens and screeching car horns around Moore Square in downtown Raleigh, viewers took in eight short films from local filmmakers and six animations from N.C. State students. The event was FilmSPARK, an initiative to bring together filmmakers in the community.
FilmSPARK provides a means of expression for filmmakers in the Triangle. Writers and directors of the eight films hail from Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill.
For Becca Cohen, a senior in English with a minor in film studies, FilmSPARK is her first film screening in Raleigh.
“My professor e-mailed me and told me to come for extra credit,” Cohen said. “She told us it would feature a lot of filmmakers from the Triangle, but I have no idea what to expect.”
After the screenings, Cohen said she enjoyed the event and appreciated the fact that all of the filmmakers were local.
Shambhavi Kaul, an organizer of FilmSPARK, said the event provides a venue for communication.
“It reflects the diversity and the richness of the area, but it doesn’t always come in contact with the greater community,” Kaul said. “That’s what so great about ComSPARK. This work is about to come out and be shown.”
While the filmmakers are from the local community, many of the films are set in national and international locations. While 2006 National Student Academy Awards gold-medal winner Sean Overbeeke’s Christmas Wish List is set in Chapel Hill, Sally Van Gorder’s Sift explores the thoughts of young girls in the Qatar. The documentary Frozen City by Alex Perez and Brian McGinn explores seven-time Slurpee capital of the world Winnipeg, Manitoba, and William Noland went to London after the subway bombings in 2005 to film those being filmed by surveillance cameras in Occulted.
FilmSPARK is a ComSPARK event. Ali Khalifa is one of five ComSPARK “bobbleheads” who helped organize the event. According to Khalifa, every “SPARK” organizes its own events in its own community.
“Our central goal is to connect the creative communities to help that become a self-sustaining system,” Khalifa said. “You can’t just have a bunch of artists. They’ll starve. You can’t just have a bunch of geeks. They have creative needs. Anybody who writes code won’t be able to generate that code if they don’t have an outlet.”
