By Jon DeGooyer
Towards the bookend of the summer, Bishops collaborated with the Film Festival of Knowlton to bring in students to spend a week in the scenic town, to screen films, workshop with filmmakers, and to give a panel discussing their experiences. This experiment was the idea of the festival director, Julie Bardet, who wanted to reach out to a younger and enthusiastic audience and get them involved with the Knowlton and Quebec film subculture.
Including myself, eight Bishop’s students attended the festival, a majority of whom are aspiring filmmakers themselves. On the afternoon of August 19th, the group drove to Knowlton, supervised by the chair of the film department, Gregory Brophy.
Photo courtesy of Jon DeGooyer
We stayed in a beautiful country house, hosted by a friend from the festival. One of the students, Samiya Bouziane- Merceron, said this about the shared living space: “It was a super fun experience! It was cool watching the movies together and being able to talk about them as a group and stuff.” There you have it, folks!
Of the feature films shown, the film Best Boy was a highlight, an absurdist and harrowing family drama by director Jesse Noah Klein. We got a chance to talk to Noah over coffee afterwards. He answered our questions and provided advice about working within the festival system, production costs, and getting your name out into the world as a filmmaker. We also had the opportunity to speak to German director Wiebke von Carolsfeld on her daring survivalist-drama film Somebody’s Daughter. She spoke about her motivation to depict a morally grey yet strong female protagonist.
The variety of films on display struck a cord with student filmmaker Kas MacDougal:“With such a wide breadth of film work on display, I felt honoured to be able to catch pieces ranging from cutting edge documentary features like Chouwa Lang’s ‘Replica’ to straight from Sundance debut features like Walter Thompson’s ‘If I go, will they miss me?’ 10/10 would attend again!”
The event ended with a screening of shorts, two of which were from Bishop’s filmmakers. Kas MacDougal’s experimental horror short, “Signals”, featured groundbreaking special effects, while Elizabeth Hebert’s film “Night Poet” explored the friendship of four students with a tragic twist. “I was quite shocked to learn that they had actually accepted it,” she commented. “To have it accepted into the KFF, where most projects are done by screenwriters and directors who have so much more knowledge in the field, was something else entirely.”
The eight attending students also got the chance to speak on a panel about the shorts and the festival itself. That night, we reigned it in with karaoke before returning home. A particular highlight was Kas MacDougall and Dr. Brophy’s duet of David Bowie’s classic “Heroes”. Hopefully, Knowlton will continue this opportunity for a whole new batch of Bishop’s students to connect and experience filmmaking next year.
