film

It only takes a stroll through the neighborhood to understand film’s place in Harlem’s history. The Jets of 1961′s “West Side Story” patrolled 110th Street, Denzel Washington’s titular character hung out at the—now-defunct—Lenox Lounge in 1992′s “Malcolm X,” and the quirky Tenenbaum family resided at a house on the corner of 144th Street and Covenant Avenue in “The Royal Tenenbaums.” A walk around the 125th Street area holds both the grand past of Harlem film and present-day big-name cinema with the remains of the Loew’s Victoria Theater and the current AMC Magic Johnson Harlem 9.

Le Lycée Razi, Tehran, 1968. A group of Iranian Girl Scouts embark on their annual public service week to prepare for the historic visit of French President Georges Pompidou, accompanied by the Shah of Iran. Assigned mundane tasks, one of the girls finds an opportunity to do something unique to benefit her own community, as well as please Pompidou.

At the beginning of the short film “Oleander,” the spirited teenager Oleander Jones kisses her boyfriend in the back of his pickup truck, proudly declaring, “I believe in the power of love. And by love, I mean sex, and by sex, I mean that sexual fulfillment is a fundamental right.” In a country where sexual education—particularly the continued emphasis on abstinence-only sexual education—is an increasingly contentious subject, Oleander’s unabashedly pro-sex attitude shatters norms of female sexuality.

Columbia School of the Arts promotes its film master’s degree program with a skillfully produced trailer that offers a seductive sales pitch to prospective applicants. The school boasts that students’ films play at “every major film festival you can think of: Telluride, Berlin, South by Southwest and Tribeca, Cannes.” Deans and professors tout the program’s focus on practical training and portfolio development set students up for industry success: The school proudly announces that students are “making things from the first day they come here and they’re making things as they walk out the door.”

As a child, writer and director Channing Godfrey Peoples attended the Miss Juneteenth pageant held each year in Fort Worth, Texas. Seeing beautiful black women celebrated on stage, on the holiday that commemorates when slaves in Texas learned that they had been freed in 1865, left a lasting impression on her.

Director, writer, editor, photographer, first-generation college student, music lover, Instagrammer, daughter, storyteller. Just like her, the films Mariah Barrera, CC ’24, creates cannot be pigeonholed. They explore everything from the devastation of incarceration to the lighthearted simplicity of teenage joy.

“What’s up? Want to dance?” At a house party in Queens, Ulises' construction worker friends convince him to dance for them. He agrees, but instead of bopping to the American music that is playing, he chooses to dance cumbia, a Colombian style. When they laugh at him and call him a loser, Ulises walks away, unwilling to give up a dance that represents who he is just to fit in.

Computers buzz, Wi-Fi networks struggle to connect, and microphones jump between muted and live. With scripts in blue light, the members of the Columbia Screenwriters Guild, known more colloquially as CU OnScreen, strive to find a virtual writing community in uncertain times.

For the past 15 years, Maysles Documentary Center has honed its marquees to deliver films that tell untold stories by unheard people, both on a local and global scale.

Following the closure of schools across the country in mid-March, Barnard’s and Columbia’s film departments began operating entirely remotely. In the film industry, production halted, movie theaters closed, and filmmakers reckoned with the limitations and possibilities of remote movie-making. Now, more than four months later, both Columbia’s film department and the film industry are ramping up operations—with adjustments.