SENE Film, Music & Arts Festival 2009

'Fate Scores' explores themes of isolation, connection, and chance. Two strangers--a guitarist (Albert M. Chan) and an introspective young woman (Heidi Rhodes)--cross paths at an empty concrete bench. One by one, additional strangers join the pair on the bench--a distressed woman in a foot cast, an insecure jogger, a famished pregnant woman, an anxious businessman at lunch, a curious child with an ice cream cone, two quarrelsome women, and a dignified collector of soda cans. Whereas the young woman discreetly observes the whirlwind of interactions between the strangers, the guitarist remains completely engrossed in fixing his broken guitar string. Despite their differing reactions to the activity at the bench, the guitarist and the young woman eventually discover they have something special in common.

Set in the middle ages, the infamous Dr. FAUST, dances with the devil's servant, Mephisto, and is awarded. All Faust wanted was more power, more glory, and more ability to seduce a young Gretchen. Faust faces a dilemma when his bargain with Mephisto sours. In the end, in the face of his failure to love, he transcends his worldly desires to achieve immortality. This film is a visual interpretation of Faust, inspired by Goethe part One. Puppetman Steven Ritz-Barr and award winning director Hoku Uchiyama team up to create their own inspired version of the fabled medieval scholar, Faust. The exquisite, old-European style rod-marionettes were created by Russian puppet Master Eugene Seregin. And edgy musical score, composed by Englishman, John Greaves displays a fusion of jazz, blues and rock so powerful it transcends the spoken word. ' visually engrossing, wonderfully atmospheric and kept me engrossed from start to finish. The puppets are superbly evocative and expressive, and the sets are gorgeously crafted while maintaining a homemade aesthetic that feels timeless. In some respects recreated a German expressionist silent film, relying on suggestion and gesture to convey Faust's inner conflicts and overall plot. The score reinforces that feel -- it's superbly suited to your subject matter and to the visual sensibility of the sets -- a vaguely foreboding tone that feels both classical and contemporary. The synthesizer effects whenever the devil speaks succeed particularly well in expressing evil mixed with otherworldly powers. ' -Stephen London

Are you a Potterhead? Can you tell a Hippogriff from a Crumple-Horned Snorkack? Unless you've been struck by a Confundus Charm, you know that author J.K. Rowling cast a great spell with her magical book series about a boy wizard, conjuring a worldwide reading phenomenon and "wizard rock" bands like Rhode Island's own Draco and The Malfoys. If you're wild about Harry, grab your Floo Powder and join us in the "Common Room" for a crash course in "reel" movie wizardry. You’ll learn about: * Harry Potter movie costuming and special effects * create your own Magical Creatures animation toy * join other First Years as a cameraperson, actor or director to recreate a scene from a Harry Potter movie.

En route to interview for her dream job over achiever, Sylvia Wiggins, finds herself trapped with a calamity from her past.

In the middle of a dry, desolate landscape stands Tower 37: a shimmering water processing station, siphoning every last drop of water from a once pristine lake. Day in and day out the station's lone steward monitors the tower's activities, never realizing that Tower 37 is slowly destroying an entire ecosystem. But when two unexpected guests arrive, the tower's operator learns the high cost of his ignorance.'The Incident at Tower 37' leverages the power of allegory and the beauty of computer animation to foster a debate about the ownership, use, and exhaustion of natural resources. What is not obvious from the events of the film, however, is the fact that 'Tower 37' is a result of a significant new direction in undergraduate animation education. Writer/director Chris Perry, an Assistant Professor of Media Arts & Sciences at Hampshire College, has created a sequence of courses at Hampshire that bring interdisciplinary collaboration into the animation classroom. These classes have put students from all corners of campus into the same room and given them the same assignment, namely, to produce a high-end computer animated short film. To meet this goal, working relationships need to be forged between studio artists, animators, filmmakers, composers, and computer scientists. These same relationships form the foundation of any major studio feature animation team, however, they are unfortunately rare in academia.

Kees Hoogeveen uses his horn majestically to improvise over a tongue-in-cheek suburban view of Amsterdam.

'Iowa Girls' is about the unique experience of female high school basketball players in Iowa. Generations of young girls played a six-player version of the game decades before Title IX opened doors for women. For nearly a century, six-on-six was the number one spectator sport in the state. It was so popular that the girls regularly played before sellout crowds, and attendance at their games often exceeded that of the boys' games. Iowa Girls is about the special athletes that played this extraordinary game, and the thousands of Iowans - men and women - who believed in gender equality long before Title IX imposed it.

A wide-eyed wannabe, whose youth is but a speck in his rearview mirror, finally sets out from the hinterland for the brass ring marked “Hollywood,” and then things go awry.