Provided

Cornell alumni actors Craig Divino and Matt Volner portray rival archaeologists in Brad Wilson's comedy "Diggers."

From visual experiments to dramatic narratives, a musical, and real and mock documentaries, student films took shape this semester in Cornell film courses and as part of thesis work. One film was shot in Paris, another on location in Los Angeles with professional actors.

Seven student filmmakers showed their work May 11 in the Schwartz Center's Kiplinger Theatre.

The films, all of them under 30 minutes, were produced for the course Film 493, Advanced Film and Video Projects, with Marilyn Rivchin, senior lecturer in the film program in the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance.

The public screening was preceded on May 8 by critiques of completed or nearly completed work with Rivchin and class members.

"What would you do or change if it were your film and you had a couple of days?" Rivchin asked the class.

Most of the student directors shot their films on digital video and used editing facilities at the Schwartz Center, but the similarities ended there.

Some films used Ithaca-area and campus locations; others were shot on location in Nevada, Paris, New York and Los Angeles.

Dawn Kamoche, a film and Africana studies major, adopted the style and structure of a Bollywood musical to tell the story of a campus romance in "Beautiful Love." Kamoche's 23-minute film was part of her senior thesis on Indian cinema.

For his project, "night and day," senior Jeremy Coffey filmed parallel relationship stories in New York and Paris, the latter during spring break. Gregory Brown '07 and Madeline Janotta '08 cast actor Ed Schiff, a resident professional teaching associate at Cornell, at the center of their psychological drama "Headspace," with cinematography by senior film major David Gelston.

Fine arts major Brad Wilson's "Diggers" -- an adventure comedy about dueling archaeology students -- is part of his College Scholar project on classical comedy. Wilson's film also screened at the 2007 Ivy League Film Festival, held at Brown University in April.

Show business -- from Hollywood to small-time theater -- received special attention. Senior Kathy Morrow interviewed and filmed members of a theatrical company in Virginia City, Nev., for "Shakespeare on the Comstock: The Gold Hill Theatre Troupe." Senior theater arts major Reed Van Dyk's mock documentary "The Conservatory," meanwhile, is a mostly gentle satire of musical theater hopefuls.

Trevor White '07, a film major and Presidential Scholar, started writing a script for a contemporary film noir back in August.

"Coming into the semester, I'd finished all my production courses, and I said to Marilyn I wanted to do my thesis in Los Angeles," White said. "When I started considering the size of it, I thought, 'maybe I can't pull this off.'"

With a grant from Panavision, he shot "A Detective Story" on Super 16 mm film on location in Los Angeles with professional actors, including Marty Lodge (whose television credits include "The Wire" and "Grey's Anatomy") and Carly Thomas ("Two and a Half Men").White spent three weeks in L.A. on preproduction, then shot his film in six 12-hour days over winter break in January. Composer Jermaine Stegall provided the original score.

A May 6 screening at Cornell Cinema's Willard Straight Theatre also featured eight diverse short films, the final projects from students in Rivchin's Film 422 Cinematography course: Van Dyk, Oliver Bundy, Bryan Foster, Rachel Katz, William Boyce, Sungyun Gim, Lindsey Ann Glover and Gabriel Long.

For more information on film programs at Cornell, visit http://www.arts.cornell.edu/film.