The Electronic Media Area of the West Virginia University School of Art & Design is pleased to announce the screening of the Third Annual West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival, to be held on the WVU campus April 20-22.

The festival opens on Friday, April 20, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Gluck Theater of the WVU Mountainlair. It then moves to the WVU Creative Arts Center on Saturday, April 21, where works will be shown from noon to 4 p.m. in the Falbo Theatre and from 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 pm in the Bloch Learning and Performance Hall (200A).

The festival concludes back in the Gluck Theater on Sunday, April 22, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., where awards will be announced.

Over the course of three days, the festival will screen dozens of films, videos and animations from across the country and around the world, including new and original works from Russia, Poland, France, Italy, Mexico, Singapore, India, Spain and Belgium – just to name a few. It will showcase works by regional filmmakers and students from WVU’s School of Art & Design.

Admission is free and open to the public. Please visit the festival website for updated times and locations: http://www.mountaineerfilmfest.org/

According to Art & Design assistant professor Gerald Habarth, the organizer of the festival, it was established in 2010 as an international competition, accepting submissions in the categories of narrative, documentary, animation, experimental video and student productions.

“Its mission is to foster creative and artistic approaches to these genres, while connecting West Virginia University students and the surrounding Morgantown community to the world of independent filmmaking and new media art,” he said.

“The festival also strives to highlight topical themes in culture, especially those that connect to the experience and history of West Virginia and the surrounding Appalachian region.”

Taking a cue from the ””Designing for the Divide conference organized by the design faculty of the WVU School of Art & Design, this year’s festival has a special category of works that focus attention on issues relating to political division and intransigence.

“The 1921 Blair Mountain insurrection in the southern coalfields of West Virginia are a reminder of the consequences of the inability to find common ground,” Habarth said. “Nevertheless, from Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party Express, from ‘tax and spend liberals’ to ‘corporate-jet conservatives,’ from ‘environmental wackos’ to ‘Bible-thumping extremists,’ our public political discourse is increasingly marked by extreme partisanship and opposition.

“Political battles are waged from such extreme polarized positions that compromise in the name of finding common ground is viewed as weak and anathema to the cause. Moreover, our discourse is increasingly colored by distortions, misrepresentations and character attacks. Discord, rather than discourse, appears to be the principle characteristic in our public debates. These same dynamics seem to play themselves out across the globe, as attempts to resolve social and economic disagreements reveal the distances that separate the various moral prisms though which humans view the world.”

This year’s festival solicits works that draw attention to these and related issues. How can art and filmmaking return civility and reason to our debates? How can art reframe and recast polarizing issues, helping us to see them in a new light? How can art create space for new conversations about difficult subjects?

The festival is a non-profit event. There is no charge to submit work for consideration, and admission to all screenings is free. There are no rules governing content or artist approach. Habarth said that festival organizers only seek to display well-crafted, compelling or conceptually challenging works in video, film and multimedia. All festival films have a 20-minute maximum running time.

For more information, contact Gerald Habarth at 304-290-3067, or Gerald.habarth@mail.wvu.edu.

See the website for further details: www.mountaineerfilmfest.org

-WVU-

CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu

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