Cinephile offers indie film grants, festival

The Cinephile Film Arts Organization is opening its arms -- and pocketbook -- to Bloomington area residents and students in order to support independent film and video projects. \nCinephile is accepting applications for its second annual grant program, which will provide grants of up to $500 to aspiring filmmakers on campus and in the community. Grant recipients will also have their films entered into the second Annual Cinephile Festival of Independent Film and Video. \n"Last year's festival was a huge success. All we really hoped for was to break even," said Executive Director David Pruett. "We were really surprised with what people were able to accomplish last year with the films that were in the festival."\nApplications for grants can be picked up at the Cinemat, located at Fourth and Walnut streets or can be downloaded from www.cinephilefilmarts.org and are due by Oct. 13. Recipients of the grants are chosen by a panel of selected judges, which included Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan last year. Films of all types, subjects and lengths are accepted -- anything from four minutes to feature-length, from animation to stop-motion. \nThe grant program gave away more then $1,500 last year, and Cinephile plans to increase that amount each year. But Pruett said a few 20-dollar bills are more than enough for some. \n"In some cases people only wanted $20 or $30," Pruett said of last year's recipients. "(Low-budget filmmaking) is about making the most out of the resources at hand."\nCinephile was created in 2003 by IU alumni Colleen Jankovich and John Landis as a way of networking, providing resources and making exhibition space available. They now reside in Pittsburgh but are still involved with the organization.\n"I'm pretty amazed at how well it's been moving along," Jankovich said. "When John and I were leaving, we knew we had to get things done."\nPruett claims that much of their success was only possible because of their interns, seniors Courtney Wiesenauer and Matt Seegers. Before the founders moved away, much of the interns' work was split among Pruett, Jankovich and Landis.\nThe central focus of Cinephile is to help area filmmakers. One way of helping is that they now provide resources in return for volunteer work.\n"We've been focusing so much on helping other people that (Jankovich, Pruett) and I haven't had a big film project in a while," said Landis.\nWhen Cinephile started its weekly fundraising project Atomic Age Cinema (held at the Cinemat at midnight on Saturdays), the founders did not know what they would do with the money until they thought of the grant program and film festival.\n"We started the fundraising program and decided to find a way to give the money back to filmmakers," Landis said.\nCinephile hopes to gain status as a nonprofit organization to make growth easier. It also plans to eventually have a partnership with the University that would give credits to IU students for taking classes through Cinephile, Pruett said.\n"A lot of dedicated film schools are really expensive. Some of them you can't get financial aid for, and that's definitely a gap that I think we're in a position to fill," Pruett said.\nAnother way Cinephile is trying to expand is by holding a kids film workshop in the summer. Pruett and the founders are very excited to bring children in and increase involvement to a younger audience.\nWith community support and enough volunteers, Cinephile hopes to continue expanding.\nPruett said he hopes that someday Cinephile will help "make the Bloomington film scene look like the Bloomington music scene"