The 2022 San Luis Obispo International Film Festival will showcase six short films written and produced entirely by Cal Poly students.
The student-made films will be screened at the festival’s Cal Poly Short Cuts showcase at 5:30 p.m. on April 28 at the Fremont Theater.
Most films were written in Media Arts and Technologies: Storytelling (ISLA 340) and were produced by students in Media Arts and Technologies: Cinematic Processes (ISLA 341). The students were overseen by Interdisciplinary Studies professor Randi Barros, who is a film editor and screenwriter.
“They work really hard on these projects, but I think the fact that we have this big screening at Fremont really encourages them,” Barros said.
Shay Lyon, an interdisciplinary studies senior, wrote, produced and edited “All I Want for Christmas is the Truth.” The film follows a young boy who is trying to find out more about Santa Clause.
Lyon said that he had a lot of fun writing the film’s script for his ISLA 340 class in the fall.
When he got to ISLA 341 during Winter Quarter, the class voted on the scripts to decide which films to produce.
“I got lucky, I guess, or people connected with the script, so we chose mine as one of them,” Lyon said.
The lineup of films being shown at the Cal Poly Short Cuts event are “Poetic Projection,” “On that Note,” “Solecita,” “August,” “All I Want for Christmas is the Truth” and “Two Things.” Each film is between eight and 18 minutes long.
“Each of the films that this class produced are incredibly different, and everyone’s artistic aspects are unique and you will definitely relate to at least one of the stories there,” Lyon said. “There’s a wide variety and the hard work put in definitely shows.”
Art and design major Michael Aponte, the screenwriter and cinematographer of “On That Note,” said that working on his film was different from class projects he had done in the past.
“We all had this sort of added pressure of that we’re showing these at the SLO Film Fest, and so, we wanted it to be extremely good,” Aponte said.
This year’s festival, held from April 26 to May 1, includes 121 feature films, short films and music videos. There will be both in-person and virtual offerings.
Tickets to Cal Poly Short Cuts are free for students and $10 for the general public and can be purchased on the film festival’s website.
For more information about the Cal Poly student-made films, visit @sloshortcuts on Instagram.