Film fest challenges thought
August 31, 2010
Art Instructor Bart Woodstrup doesn’t care much for major motion pictures.
For the most part, Hollywood blockbusters are much too linear for Woodstrup’s taste. The instructor would rather be confused.
“What Happens Next?,” a film festival that screened Tuesday night at The House Cafe, 263 E. Lincoln Highway, was created by Woodstrup to inspire that same confusion in others.
The 90 minute film contains the work of 15 artists from NIU and the New York Hudson Valley area.
Woodstrup asked each artist to submit pieces that stood apart from their main work. This included test runs, promotional material and side projects. The works were then arranged together by Woodstrup into the film festival.
“I really shouldn’t even call it a film fest because it’s not like your typical film fest with little narrative films and little stories,” Woodstrup said. “There’s only one or two of them that I would even say has anything resembling a story. Most of them are either abstract, or expressionist videos that are somehow synced to music in a synesthetic way.”
Originally created in 2007 as a reel to be displayed in the video lounge of a New York art expo, Woodstrup displayed the show at the Beacon Sitelines and Hudson Plugged-In art festivals in 2008.
Tuesday’s incarnation incorporated artists from NIU.
Iga Puchalska, time arts graduate student, who had three pieces in the festival, said she was excited to have her work screened with artists from across the United States. She described one of her pieces being screened, “Organicism,” as “My vision of the circle of life.”
Woodstrup hopes that by having so much variety and lack of resolute stories he will cause viewers to think intellectually.
“When I want to be entertained I go to the cinema,” Woodstrup said. “When I want to think, and be more socially engaged with people that live next door to me, this is the kind of film I want to see.”