April 9, 2008

OWU Student Filmmakers to Shine This Weekend

The Millfield Mine as it looked in 1930.

As part of the Ethnographic and Documentary Filmmaking course taught by Mary Howard, Ph.D., students spent half of a semester studying documentary film styles and the other half learning the hands-on skills needed to shoot, direct, and edit footage. As a final project, the students were asked to create their own documentary films to screen at the annual festival.

This year’s films—which range from 12 minutes to 73 minutes in length—focus on everything from immigration issues to human rights violations in Darfur. Howard is even screening her own film, “Swept Out,” which highlights the more than 500 people living in tent and shanty communities in central Ohio.

Will Ruzek ’11 of Whitelaw, Wisconsin, and Andrew “Kenji” Morinaga ’10 of Oakton, Virginia, decided to focus on the local community in “Delaware: The Unknown Drug Problem.” The pair interviewed various city officials, including those from the newly created Delaware Drug Task Force, and even went on a “ride along” with a local police officer.

“I think we’re all kind of naïve,” says Morinaga, citing that 75 percent of crime in Delaware County is drug-related. “I didn’t know how big of a problem it was—no one talks about it. You have to look for it.”

The two shot approximately 20 hours of footage, which was eventually whittled down to a 17-minute final product. They rented video equipment from the University’s AV Center in Beeghly Library and edited the footage using Apple’s Final Cut Pro software.

“I always wanted to do something with film, travel, and geography,” says Ruzek, who is leaning toward a major in geography or history. “This [project] made me more confident to talk and interview people, and the final product is pretty cool.”

Samantha Kentner ’09 of Dayton, Ohio, chose a topic close to her heart for “Death on Sunday Creek.” The film chronicles a 1930 explosion at the Millfield Mine in Athens County, which killed 82 people and is considered Ohio’s worst mining disaster. Kentner’s great-grandfather and great-uncle were both survivors of the tragedy.

“It took me a long time to realize it would be a good topic,” says Kentner, who grew up hearing stories about the tragedy and has attended the memorial service at Millfield in the past. “It seemed like a good thing to bring to people’s attention.”

At the time of the explosion, Kentner’s great-grandfather was in his early 40s and her great-uncle was just 16 or 17. Both were among the survivors who were able to escape through one of the mine shafts. Another group of survivors waited for three hours behind carbon monoxide-blocking curtains for a rescue team before crawling out on their own. Another 19 were trapped for nine hours before being dragged out and narrowly escaping death.

Kentner’s footage includes an interview with her great-uncle before his death in 1997, and a recent interview with the only living survivor of the Millfield disaster—now a 96-year-old man. She also interviewed her father, who has studied the event extensively.

“The hardest part for me was that the project was so close to me personally,” says Kentner, who edited approximately seven hours of footage down to a 35-minute film. “I cared about [the topic] and knew I would be driven and motivated to make it good, but I had a hard time cutting it down. I wanted to make it the best I could.”

Click here for a complete listing of OWU Documentary Film Festival times and descriptions. The event is free to attend, but donations will be accepted to benefit The Open Shelter, Inc., in Columbus, Ohio.

– Ann Marcum