 |
 |
|
| MONTHLY NEWSLETTER
APRIL 2025
| |
|
Mason Film Festival 2025
The 2025 Mason Film Festival is taking place on Tuesday, April 29, Wednesday, April 30, and Saturday, May 3, 2025 in the Johnson Center Cinema on George Mason’s Fairfax Campus.
Registration is required.
Important information for the Senior Showcase:
The Senior Showcase on Saturday, May 3rd is sold out.
For those who would still like to attend, we will have an overflow room, the Johnson Center Gold Room, where attendees can watch a live stream of the screenings and Q&A.
The Senior Showcase begins at 3pm and doors open at 2:30pm. At the event, you will need to check in to claim your seat and to receive your wristband. The wristband is required in order to enter the JC Cinema for the event. If you have not checked in, any unclaimed seats will become available to attendees on our waitlist.
Please be sure to be in your seat at the start of the screening.
Mason Film Festival Awards Ceremony
Saturday, May 3 at 7:45pm | Johnson Center Bistro
Directly following the Senior Showcase, there will be an awards ceremony in the Johnson Center Bistro where we will announce Academic Achievement, Capstone Excellence, and Showcase Awards.
| |
Know Before You Go
Parking and Walking Directions
Parking:
Hourly parking is available in the Mason Pond Parking Deck located at 4500 Aquia Creek Ln, Fairfax, VA 22030.
Walking from the Mason Pond Parking Deck to the Johnson Center Cinema:
Exit the Mason Pond Parking Deck on the ground level of the 3rd floor. The Johnson Center (#30 on campus map) will be straight ahead, just to the right of the George Mason statue. Go inside and take the elevators down to the ground level. The Johnson Center Cinema is around the corner, left of the elevators.
| |
Registration Reminder
Fall 2025 registration has begun.
If you have questions or concerns regarding your schedule or course offerings, reach out to your Academic Advisor, Maddie Portnoy, at mportnoy@gmu.edu.
Below, please see some of the courses we’re offering.
| |
Featured Fall 2025 Classes
| |
FAVS 225 Introduction to World Cinema
Multiple Sections Offered
This course explores examples of many kinds of films from around the world, including documentary, fiction, and experimental. Students will learn to analyze film language and structures, with attention to cinema's many contexts, including economic institutions, historical events, political and social issues that shape and are shaped by movies.
| |
FAVS 250 Business of Film and TV
Multiple Sections Offered
This course provides an overview of the film and television industry from a business perspective. Students learn basic filmed entertainment business practices and protocol, including film financing, copyright & trademark, anti-trust, trademark, IP licensing, agents & managers, entertainment unions & guilds, film distribution, and marketing techniques.
| |
FAVS 260 Video Editing for Film
Multiple Sections Offered
In this course, students practice creative storytelling through video editing. They learn by doing, working with a range of editing software, watching and discussing movies, and engaging in hands-on individual and group projects.
| |
FAVS 300 Global Horror Film
Multiple Sections Offered
This course is an introduction to the horror film genre. Looking at various national and transnational cinemas, the course traces horror’s development from its literary beginnings through contemporary filmic storytelling. We’ll consider artistic, commercial, and sociopolitical aspects of the horror film and explore themes such as war, terror, and censorship. Students will learn to identify how horror texts both reflect and influence cultural interdependence and inequality across the world.
| |
FAVS 366 Video Production for Social Change
Wednesdays, 10:30am-1:10pm | AB 1005
Professor Rebekah Wingert-Jabi
This video production course emulates a professional production environment where student teams, under the instructor’s supervision, produce effective pieces for local community-based non-profit organizations. Students will assess clients’ goals, develop a creative concept and strategy, and a statement of work. Developing professionalism and collaboration, students will see their work reach beyond the classroom, speaking to broad and also specific audiences.
| |
OSCAR's Annual Spring Celebration
of Student Scholarship and Impact
May 6, 2025 | 12:00 – 3:30 PM | Dewberry Hall
Any undergraduate student who has worked on a project this year is invited to register to present a poster or display of their project.
Details on registration and submission materials can be found here.
The deadline for submissions is April 29th.
View Celebration's website and past projects here.
| |
Student Academy Awards
The 52nd annual Student Academy Awards competition is accepting submissions. The deadline for submitting a film for consideration is Sunday, May 18, 2025 at 11:59pm PT. Please note the earlier-than-usual deadline date.
Students can still submit films directly to the competition via Film Freeway.
Read the competition and eligibility rules carefully: please find these and a link to the online submission portal at www.oscars.org/saa.
This year’s Student Academy Awards ceremony will be held in New York City for the first time. It will take place at the Ziegfeld Ballroom on October 6, 2025.
| |
Faculty Spotlight
Professor Samirah Alkassim was a respondent on the panel "Disentangling Networks of Film Distribution and Exhibition in the Modern Middle East" at the annual conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, held in Chicago, April 3 to April 6, 2025.
| |
| Student and Alumni Achievement
| |
Congratulations to FAVS students Emma Davenport and Aryaman Kantawala and alum Khubab Hassan ('23), for being selected as winners of the 2025 Filmfest DC Trailer Competition.
Each winner’s trailer will be shown on the big screen during Filmfest DC, from April 24 to May 4, posted on their website homepage, and in television advertising. They will also be acknowledged in the Festival catalog.
We are proud of you all!
(Click each winner’s name to view their trailer)
| |
Film Opportunities and Resources
Festival Submissions:
| |
Did you miss our last newsletter?
Check out the archives here.
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
We want to hear from you! If you have news you would like to contribute, please send it to film@gmu.edu. We are looking for regional film events and updates from Film at Mason alumni. Keep up-to-date on all the current Film at Mason news at film.gmu.edu.
Film and Video Studies
College of Visual and Performing Arts
4400 University Dr. MSN 5D8
Fairfax, VA 22030
703-993-3287 | film@gmu.edu
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
