The third annual 72-hour Film Festival will return this weekend with battle-centric themed, live action films from the NIU community.
The film festival is a student-run event hosted by the School of Theatre and Dance where participants work alone or in groups to create thematic short films with limited resources in under three days on the first weekend. They then present the films the next weekend after filming.
The festival will be held at 7 p.m. Sunday in the Stevens Building Lecture Hall 170. Attendance is free and no pre-registration is required.
Typically, the festival has four to six participating groups competing against each other with each group being given some equipment to shoot their movie and a theme to center their films around.
The films are kept around five to 10 minutes long with some rare exceptions and are usually live-action. This year’s theme is “Battle of the Ages,” with participating teams assigned different time periods, such as the 1920s or medieval times, to incorporate in their films.
Once the films have been shown, the audience and judges will be able to vote for their personal favorite films in an award show where the directors of the films can win specific awards.
Chance Lira, a B.A. theater senior and co-creator of the festival, said he is more than happy having other members of the community participate in the festival, regardless of having experience with a camera or not.
“If anybody sees this next year and they’re interested, we had it so, that way, any NIU member, as long as they’re currently going here, can be a part of it,” Lira said. “The films aren’t meant to be the best in the world. They’re meant to be fun. They’re meant to breathe life into something that’s gotten very serious. And I think, with the state of the world right now, we should try and have a little bit more fun.”
