The Yale Film Alliance on Wednesday evening held its annual Film at Yale Welcome Event at the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media for students to learn more about film-related opportunities on campus.

“This is going to be a big year for film at Yale,” said Yale Film Alliance President TJ Noel-Sullivan ’20.

Bulldog Productions, the Yale Student Film Festival and the Yale Film Society co-hosted the get-together, along with the Yale Film Alliance. The purpose of collaborative events like Wednesday’s is to “facilitate film at Yale” and allow interested students to “all be in one room” and “make connections,” Noel-Sullivan said.

Students can take their personal connections even further later this year at the upcoming Yale in Hollywood panel. It will feature successful Yale alumni and prominent Hollywood guests discussing how to get a job in Los Angeles. Guests will include Yale in Hollywood President Kevin Winston, who works with Sony Pictures and Fox Interactive Media. Actor Perry King ’70 will screen his directorial debut “The Divide” and host a student workshop on directing.

Thanks to the recent partnership between the Yale Film Alliance and the Yale Drama Coalition, actors can access audition opportunities in film and theater through a “heavily improved” joint website, according to Noel-Sullivan. There are also production opportunities for crew members.

“Film has always been a passion of mine,” said Paul Martin LAW ’20, who plans to specialize in entertainment law. He initially came out to the event to learn “what the different groups were,” and described art as being “intergenerational.” He said that when it comes to art, he said, age and discipline “[don’t] matter if there’s a common interest.”

Bulldog Productions President Serena Michaels ’21 said the student filmmaking group aims to also “provide people with connections to resources” and “overall support.” In the coming weeks, the group will host a “crash-course” structured as a series of workshops aimed at “guid[ing] people through every step of the process” from filming and editing to production and screenwriting.

Makers of short films may also participate in the annual Yale Student Film Festival, which will take place in April. The festival features a small selection of student-made films from around the world. It received around 1,100 submissions from 90 countries last year, according to festival co-director Josh van Biema ’20. Submissions range from under a minute to 40 minutes long. They can fall into one of three categories: documentary, experimental and narrative.

In its fifth year, van Biema said he’s “expecting even more” submissions to the three-day festival, considering last year’s increase from 700 submissions two years ago. A group of judges watch each submission and determine which 30 or so will be shown during the festival.  “We screen only the best of the best,” said co-director Lily Weisberg ’21.

Aside from the Yale Student Film Festival, the Yale Film Society hosts free screenings on 35mm film in the Whitney Humanities Center, according to Yale Film Society President Filip Sestan ’20. The next showing in the series will be the Coen brothers’ “Fargo” on Sept. 22.

Because the movies are not digitally projected, the organization has a projectionist who helps supervise the viewing experiences. “Watching film on film is way better,” Sestan said.

Each of the four student film organizations at Wednesday’s mixer will plan one film-related event per month this academic year.

Allison Park | allison.park@yale.edu