The Ivy Film Festival is the world's largest entirely student-run film festival, held annually on the campus of Brown University. The festival was started in 2001 by Brown juniors David Peck and Justin Slosky, with collaboration from students of the other seven Ivy League schools. The founders' goal was to create a venue, run entirely by students, to showcase the efforts of fellow student filmmakers.
The festival often attracts major talent and celebrities that attend the festival to engage in a discussion about all aspects of film. Some topics in the past have included: the relationship between film and social justice, breaking into the film industry, and the merits of attending film school. Notable appearances at the Ivy Film Festival have included Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Tim Robbins, Adrien Brody, Aaron Sorkin, James Franco, Wes Craven, Philip Glass, Dylan Kidd, James Toback, John Hamburg, Julia Stiles and Michael Showalter. In addition to student film screenings, the Festival is also host to advance screenings of popular and critically acclaimed films, often with the filmmakers present for discussions. Preview festival screenings have included the films (500) Days of Summer, Star Trek, Mean Girls, The Believer, Brick, Shine a Light, The Aristocrats and the Academy Award winning and nominated No Country for Old Men, Super Size Me, Half Nelson, Murderball, Water and Iraq in Fragments.
The Ivy Film Festival now accepts submissions from around the world for its film and screenplay competitions.
The 2007 festival included pre-release screenings of Sundance Film Festival selections, panels and workshops with award-winning filmmakers, and presentations by Doug Liman, director of The Bourne Identity and Chan-wook Park, director of Oldboy. Other guests included actor John Cho and Academy Award-winning writer/director Sarah Kernochan.
The 2008 Film Festival occurred on April 14-20th. It held the distinction of being the first student film festival to have a machinima genre. The 2008 festival featured a keynote address by Fox Filmed Entertainment Co-Chairman and CEO, Tom Rothman, and a master class by Martin Scorsese.
The 2009 Film Festival occurred on April 21-26th, its keynote panel featuring legendary actor Jack Nicholson, Chinatown producer Robert Evans, and Paramount Chairman and CEO Brad Grey, moderated by former Variety Editor-in-Chief Peter Bart.
Famous quotes containing the words ivy, film and/or festival:
“A young man, be his merit what it will, can never raise himself; but must, like the ivy round the oak, twine himself round some man of great power and interest.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The obvious parallels between Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz have frequently been noted: in both there is the orphan hero who is raised on a farm by an aunt and uncle and yearns to escape to adventure. Obi-wan Kenobi resembles the Wizard; the loyal, plucky little robot R2D2 is Toto; C3PO is the Tin Man; and Chewbacca is the Cowardly Lion. Darth Vader replaces the Wicked Witch: this is a patriarchy rather than a matriarchy.”
—Andrew Gordon, U.S. educator, critic. “The Inescapable Family in American Science Fiction and Fantasy Films,” Journal of Popular Film and Television (Summer 1992)
“Don’t you know there are 200 temperance women in this county who control 200 votes. Why does a woman work for temperance? Because she’s tired of liftin’ that besotted mate of hers off the floor every Saturday night and puttin’ him on the sofa so he won’t catch cold. Tonight we’re for temperance. Help yourself to them cloves and chew them, chew them hard. We’re goin’ to that festival tonight smelling like a hot mince pie.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)