Angel Hu, Contributing Photographer
Last Friday, Ezra Stiles College hosted its annual film festival in the Stiles dining hall. A red-carpeted event, the festival screened 13 student-produced films from all residential colleges and featured both first-time and seasoned filmmakers.
The festival was first held in 2012 and ran for the following two years. After 2014, the festival was discontinued. In fall 2017, two first-year students, Sabrina Macias ’21 and T.J. Maresca ’21, discovered the film festival on the Stiles website and revived the festival.
“What the festival is about is just trying to bring the college together, to showcase student films, and have fun,” said Alex Johnson ‘25, one of the student organizers of the festival.
Like the Yale Student Film Festival, which took place the week before, the Stiles Film Festival featured short films across numerous genres — experimental, comedy, drama and musical.
Several of the screened films were made by first-time filmmakers. The festival was a way for new and long-time filmmakers to meet, connect with each other and potentially collaborate on future projects, according to Marc Levenson, the assistant director of operations at Stiles.
“The festival is a chance for students of all levels of filmmaking — from serious filmmakers to hobbyists who are making their first film — to show their films in a setting that’s very cool, dignified and set up with great tech,” said Levenson.
The Stiles dining hall was set up to resemble a movie theater — complete with a red carpet, projector, sparkling drinks, popcorn and film posters — bringing the screenings to life.
The films were diverse in style and narrative, portraying stories that ranged from first loves to trash-riddled frat shenanigans to orchestral symphonies on black holes.
Following the screening, moose-shaped trophies were given out to winners of six categories.
Winning best experimental was Martin Vakoc’s ’26 “Hyperion Lot” — a sonic exploration of New Haven parking lots. “Paper Dreams,” Nicole Viloria’s ’26 first film, depicted a Yale first-year grappling with her past love and won best cinematography.
Olivia Cevasco ’26’s “Scholar” showcased a Yale student struggling to balance his academic and creative side, culminating in an a capella performance that earned the film the award of best musical.
“The Very Sad Tale of Gerald Humm” by Daphne Joyce Wu ’26 won best humor for its portrayal of a clueless Gerald Humm trying to figure out why his girlfriend broke up with him. Best drama went to Eleanor Atlee’s ’25 and Molly Smith’s ’25 collaboration of “The Walrus,” an emotional close-up of a sister struggling to remember her brother’s favorite chips.
Johnson’s film “Proxy” – an intense, mind-bending trip to the multiverse through a professor’s mid-life crisis – took home best film overall.
Other films screened were “Practice” by Erita Chen ’26, “An Ode to Avocado” by Paloma Lenz ’26, “Active Galactic Nuclei for Symphony Orchestra” by Rory Benjamin Bricca ’26, “Saint Valentine” by Eleanor Atlee ’25, “Black Coffee” by Daphne Joyce Wu ’26, “Trashley and the Curse of the Frat Paddle” by Molly Smith ’25 and “Goodbye, Shanghai” by Chenjun Gao ’27.
Susan Youssef, Yale College film advisor and one of the judges for the festival, was deeply impressed by the films and praised the “bravery” of making a film as a student.
“We’re rooting for these works. It’s a joyful and optimistic process. I’m scoring the films, as if I am rooting for the film to win: each and every film,” Youssef wrote in an email to the News.
The Stiles Film Festival reflects the many efforts of the college to host a lot of fun community events, as Levenson put it.
Youssef echoed these sentiments, praising Stiles’s “warm, kind and celebratory environment,” which provides a welcoming space for students who are just starting to make films and showing their work to an audience.
“Watching a film in this setting is also an invaluable learning experience. It’s a way for students to understand how their films play — how they sound, how they land emotionally, and how audiences truly react,” wrote Youssef.
Ezra Stiles College was founded in 1961.