Tale of Fantasies Fulfilled Takes Redstone Prize
Sombra Azul wins at COM film festival
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The winner of Wednesday night’s 29th annual Redstone Film Festival was not a film at all. Sombra Azul, by Rosita Lama Muvdi (COM’08), was shot entirely on video — and under water.
Experimental in nature, the movie — with its shadowy, dreamlike sequences and its shockingly disturbing ending — explores the dark side of a woman’s sexual fantasies. “They’re never meant to be fulfilled,” Muvdi says, “because they never live up to our expectations.”
The spark of inspiration for Sombra Azul, which means blue shadow in Spanish, came to Muvdi when she left the gym one night and paused to look at the empty swimming pool. “The lights were off and the pool looked dark and eerie,” she says, “and I just thought of the image of a naked woman, alone in a dark pool.”
When Muvdi told her conservative family about the project, “only my grandmother supported the idea,” she says. “So I want to dedicate the award to my grandmother.”
Originally from Barranquilla, Colombia, Muvdi is currently interning in Los Angeles. This was not her first time competing in the Redstone Festival. Her short film Auscultare, also an experimental film, was a finalist in 2008.
“Sombra Azul was a very ambitious project,” says Scott Thompson, the festival coordinator and an assistant professor of film and television at the College of Communication. “The composition and editing of the piece were incredible, and the judges were very impressed by its execution.”
The second-place winner, Werewolf Trouble, by Charlie Anderson (COM’09), kicked off the evening and drew chuckles from the audience. The comedy, which seeks to humanize the trials of werewolves, is about a werewolf who wakes up one morning to find himself only partially transformed. Horrified, he enlists his friends’ aid to restore his full human form in time for an open mic night, where he plans to dedicate a series of haikus to his girlfriend.
Werewolf Trouble will be screened at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts on Thursday, February 26, along with five other recent student films from BU.
Third place went to Donna Reyes (COM’09) for Iowa Girls, a documentary about the game of six-on-six basketball played by high school girls in Iowa for more than 60 years before the passage of Title IX. “The film is about the thousands of Iowans — both men and women — who believed in gender equality long before people elsewhere even knew what it was,” says Reyes.
“This was a tough year for the judges, perhaps the toughest yet,” Thompson says. “They were very impressed by the students’ fearlessness and unwavering enthusiasm.”
Sponsored by Sumner Redstone (Hon.’94), CEO of Viacom, the Redstone Film Festival showcases work by undergraduate and graduate students in the College of Communication’s department of film and television.
All nominations were produced for a COM film, television, or video production class. Approximately 40 entries were prescreened by a selection committee, and festival winners were chosen by a panel of prominent film industry professionals. Cash prizes go to the first, second, and third place finishers. This year’s judges were Laura Bernieri, producer of Tin Can Films; Denise Kasell, executive director of the Coolidge Corner Theatre; and John Stimpson, writer and director of the film The Legend of Lucy Keyes.
Many directors, producers, and screenwriters earned early acclaim at the Redstone Festival, which has served as a launch pad for a number of cinematic careers, including that of Chris Koch, who has directed several episodes of the TV shows Scrubs and My Name Is Earl, as well as the feature films A Guy Thing and Snow Day. “Winning the Redstone Festival gave me the confidence, I think, to go out and feel like I could keep doing this as a career,” Koch (CGS’84, COM’87) said in a recent interview with BU Today. Other Redstone finalists include Richard Gladstein (CGS’81, COM’83), producer of Finding Neverland, The Cider House Rules, and Reservoir Dogs; Gary Fleder (COM’84), who directed Runaway Jury and Kiss the Girls; and screenwriter Scott Rosenberg (COM’85), who wrote Con Air and High Fidelity.
This year’s other Redstone finalists were The General Direction of Good, by Andrew Kightlinger (COM’10); Mind the Gap, by Kristal Williams-Rowley (COM’09); and A Simple Taste, by Jac Woods (COM’08).
The winners of the Fleder-Rosenberg Short Screenplay Contest were also announced at the festival. The first-place award went to Samantha Jenness (COM’09); other award winners were Celia Duffy (COM’09) and Ashley Marie Roache (COM’10).
Vicky Waltz can be reached at vwaltz@bu.edu.
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