CSUN Film Seniors to Show their Works

Five films by graduating Cal State Northridge students will be screened next Wednesday evening at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in North Hollywood.

The screening, postponed last spring because of the Jan. 17 earthquake, is part of an annual program that gives budding undergraduate filmmakers from CSUN’s department of radio, television and film the opportunity to display their talents before a general audience.

Battling for recognition with more widely known film and theater programs at USC and UCLA, this year’s batch of student hopefuls comes from a program that, along with the rest of CSUN, is just recovering from the disheveled state it had been thrown into almost a year ago.

“We are still in a general state of discombobulation,” said Temma Kramer, the program’s event coordinator. “It was a struggle to get editing space after the quake, and teaching a directing class inside of a trailer is just absurd.

“We wouldn’t have been able to put on a normal program in the spring,” she said. “A number of the students had lost their apartments and were still wandering from friend to friend in search of a place to stay.”

Nonetheless, Kramer said, the students turned out quality products.

One film crew, confronted with inaccessible production equipment from the school and a temporary loss of location space, was actually able to turn their project into something better as a result of the temblor.

One of the crew members was “displaced from his home and two others left the project shortly after the earthquake,” said Jeffrey C. Roth, director and executive producer of “Domino Theories,” which deals with racial and sociological relationships in the city.

“But because it was such a scary experience to go through,” he said, the quake “made the rest of us realize that life is short and that you should just go out there and make your dreams come true. If you have the motivation, you’ll do it.”

Other projects to be aired Wednesday carry similar messages.

“Interpretations,” for example, depicts the struggle for success of a deaf photographer who takes on her first job with a major advertising agency.

“Dream All American” studies the impact of a life-changing moment on a former major league baseball player and ex-convict.

The free screening is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the academy, 5230 Lankershim Blvd.

The other films include “Infatuation,” the story of a 9-year-old boy who falls in love with an adult woman, and “Rough Cut Riley,” a modern detective story about a young sleuth stuck in the 1940s.