RWU plays key role in R.I. film festival

Brittany Vail, a 19-year-old sophomore at Roger Williams University in Bristol, used to be a bit fearful of approaching people she didn’t know, but not any more.
Her work helping to publicize the Roving Eye Film Festival scheduled for April 26 to 28 at Roger Williams and co-sponsored by the university and Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF), has put her in touch with all sorts of folks. “It’s gotten me over my fear of talking to new people,” the public relations major from western Massachusetts said.
The experience gained by Vail, a student in Visiting Guest Professor Ron Tippe’s “Entertainment Production” class, is just one of the benefits supporters and organizers said will accrue as a result of the fourth annual Roving Eye festival, a free three-day event open to the public that will showcase 11 documentary films. Panel discussions and receptions are part of the program.
The films cover “themes ripped from the headlines,” RIIFF said in a news release, such as: torture’s place in a democratic society; human rights in Africa; the efficacy of the death penalty; the impact of advertising on our culture; how 1970s Hollywood affected global culture; a profile of Wat Misaka, an Asian-American who was the first nonwhite drafted into what is now the NBA; and escaping poverty in Providence through the Urban Collaborative Accelerated Program, an alternative high school.
Held at various venues across the state in years past, this is the first year Roving Eye will be presented in its entirety at Roger Williams University. RIIFF Executive Director George T. Marshall is an adjunct professor of communications there. Roy J. Nirschel, university president, called him an “icon in the local film community.”
The documentary film festival is important to the liberal arts school because it is a “great way of connecting” students and the university community to critical global issues in a compelling way through the eyes of others and voices not-often heard, Nirschel said. A key goal of a liberal arts education is to “understand other points of view,” he noted. Nirschel said the university “eventually” hopes to offer a minor in film study and, “maybe over time,” a major as well. Starting back in November, plans for Roving Eye were developed by the 24 students in Tippe’s class and the 13 in Marshall’s class on documentary filmmaking. Tippe’s students are in charge of promotion and marketing, and Marshall’s class chose the films and developed criteria for the final selections, which were chosen by a panel of 15 university faculty members. Some 300 films competed for spots in the festival, a number whittled down to 50 by Marshall’s class before the final 11 were selected.
Because this is the first time the festival has been held at Roger Williams, Marshall is unsure how many people will attend, but he expects at least 400 to 500. There is seating capacity for about 1,000. The entire cost of $3,700 is coming from interdepartmental budgets at Roger Williams, he said, with RIIFF donating all materials.
“This is not intended to make money,” Marshall noted. The idea for Roving Eye came from Adam Short, producing director of RIIFF.
The documentary film festival was created in part because of the “plethora” of films submitted every year for RIIFF’s premiere event, the seven-day festival each August that last year drew about 25,000 people to downtown Providence. Last year, more than 3,000 films were submitted and only 291 shown, Marshall noted. Documentaries, Marshall said, are the most democratic form of filmmaking today because they can be made cheaply and they “touch on our lives in an amazing fashion,” giving viewers a chance to see other worlds “without filters.” •