Show Time for Film Students on KCET

From a documentary exploring America’s “love affair” with guns to an animated short detailing the devastation of Brazil’s rain forests; from a comedy about a Los Angeles man who agrees to have a dent in his car fixed by a stranger to a drama involving a doctor who restores vision to a 70-year-old blind man in a Colombian village, KCET-TV Channel 28 is showcasing the works of local student filmmakers this week.

“Fine Cut: Festival of Student Films” starts tonight and will continue over the next four nights. Altogether, 13 films by students and recent graduates of UCLA, USC, CalArts in Valencia and American Film Institute are being presented. All of the films, except for one set in apartheid South Africa, were made between 1993 and 1995.

The wonder of it is that a series on this scale has not been done before. And that’s precisely what occurred to KCET executives about a year and a half ago.

As Jackie Kain, KCET’s director of broadcasting, explained: “Because it was something that was so amazingly obvious, we turned to ourselves [and said], ‘Why have we not done something like this before? We go to screenings. Let’s do something formal. Create a festival. . . .’

“This is a film town, a media town,” Kain went on, “and some of the absolutely best [film] schools in the country are here.”

*

In 1989, KCET did broadcast a series of seven student films called “Short Cuts” but it aired in the summer and did not get much promotion or attention.

“This is the beginning of what we hope will be an annual event,” Kain said.

Besides, in the world of expensive filmmaking, the cost of the project to the station is only $27,000, including acquisition fees and graphics production.

Claire Aguilar, KCET’s manager of broadcast programs, and Daniel Fisher, a broadcasting associate, made the selections. They watched some 60 films, Aguilar said, “including some that didn’t have traditional linear narrative.”

Aside from quality, their goal was diversity--both in format and subject matter. Of the 13 films being broadcast, five were directed by women. “Also, we had to fit [the films] into an hour,” said Aguilar, a film student at UCLA a decade ago.

The shortest film is 6 1/2 minutes; the longest is “The Water Carrier,” a tribute to filmmaker Patricia Cardoso’s grandfather, who performed the first cataract operation in Colombia. “Water Carrier,” which at 50 minutes encompasses almost all of Thursday night’s broadcast, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1995.

Oscar-winning producer-director Robert Wise (“The Sound of Music,” “West Side Story”) serves as the series’ Alistair Cooke, introducing the viewer to each night’s works.

“The range of films from these young artists,” he says at the start, “exemplify the highest level of craft and mastery of film language.”

* “Fine Cut: Festival of Student Films” airs tonight, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 10 p.m., and Wednesday at 10:30 p.m., on KCET-TV Channel 28.