IU students start PRIDE film festival

When two School of Public and Environmental Affairs graduate students altered their project from a showing of the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" to Bloomington's first gay film festival, they received overwhelming community support. Arts Administration graduate students Sara Beanblossom and Kevin Hudson received so much attention for the film festival, PRIDE: In Several Short Cinematic Acts, that they had to recruit other class members to help organize the event and gained outside support from Union Board, GLBT Student Support Services, WFHB's "bloomingOUT," and several local businesses.\n"Support from the community has been so great. I've been on a big high from all of the positive response we have been getting," Beanblossom said. "Support so far shows how open-minded the community is."\nPRIDE is slated for Jan. 31 at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, 114 E. Kirkwood Ave., and will show a variety of short films -- most under 30 minutes in length -- about GLBT issues. Beanblossom and Hudson chose to screen films with gay subject matter in hopes of promoting community discussion and acceptance of diversity.\n"We're hoping to bring the community and the University together at this event," Hudson said. "It seems like diversity is an issue that the University is really working on right now. This will help promote diverse campus life as well as involve the community."\nPRIDE's organizational team will be accepting submissions for the festival until Saturday. Organizers will make final decisions about what films to screen by early December. Beanblossom said PRIDE would like to be able to debut a world premiere film by a local filmmaker. Nearly all of the films submitted so far have previously been shown in other venues. \n"The more submissions we get, the better quality the film festival will be. We've been receiving film submissions literally from around the world," Hudson said. "We'd like to focus more now on some local films." \nBeanblossom said she hoped that PRIDE would be able to show shorts by filmmakers from IU.\nPRIDE marketing coordinator Jean Kerley, an arts administration graduate student, said advertisements calling for film submissions were sent to many community papers throughout Indiana and several publications specializing in GLBT issues, trying to cover as much of Indiana as possible to make this more of a community effort, Kerley said.\n"We are trying to get a diverse array of film subjects, from comedy to drama," Hudson said. "We are trying to cover all of the genres."\nJulie Behr, an arts administration graduate student who is in charge of funding for the event, said PRIDE recently received a $1,000 endowment from the Union Board. She also said community businesses have been very supportive of the event. Some local businesses have donated money for the event while others have offered volunteer support. \n"The vast majority of the people I have contacted have wanted to help out in some way, to get involved in some capacity," Behr said.\nThe community's positive response to PRIDE has the committee thinking about the future. \n"We're hoping to start a festival that continues annually at the Buskirk-Chumley and to gather the community together to discuss diverse issues," Hudson said. \nThe film festival should last about three hours. The organizational committee plans to have either an IU professor or a local filmmaker give a lecture at the festival. \nFor more information about PRIDE, visit the Web site at mypage.iu.edu/~sjbeanbl/pride.htm or from the link off the Buskirk-Chumley Web site at www.buskirkchumley.org.\n-- Contact staff writer Jenica Schultz at jwschult@indiana.edu.