In the span of three years, a group of ambitious SUNY Binghamton students have transcended from being a humble collaborative initiative of student filmmakers to achieving excellence in the unforgiving realm of student filmmaking.
After recognizing the lack of collaboration between the cinema and theatre departments, the Binghamton Film Initiative was founded in an attempt to “bridge the gap,” as co-founder Jared Biunno puts it. What resulted was a collection of visually stunning, polarizing films that were daring and ambitious, demonstrating what could be achieved in a student film with enough time, effort, patience and determination.
“Every batch of films that we have made marks the growth of our team as filmmakers and individuals,” co-founder Oliver Lau said. “From experimenting with different genres and approaches, to reaching deeper within topics and concepts, with every new film the goal is to always educate and improve us as filmmakers.”
For the filmmakers at BFI, the sixth installment of the SUNYWide Film Festival in April 2015 somewhat served as their coming out party, as their films “Dead Meat,” “Ember” and “Fallout” impressed festival-goers.
Yet, when it was revealed that SUNY Binghamton didn’t offer film production classes at the caliber of schools such as Oswego State and SUNY Purchase, it rendered their efforts more remarkable.
This group of students dedicated precious extracurricular time to crafting these films which resulted in them winning honorable mention in the fiction category for “Ember” and the biggest award of the night, the grand jury prize, for “Fallout.”
Accolades are not what define the initiative, however, as they try to “steer away” from the concept of winning or losing awards.
“The best part about attending festivals are the filmmakers we get to meet and the mini community that forms around such festivals,” Lau said. “Nothing excites me more than seeing quality works from my peers and the prospect of teaming up and collaborating with them.”
This mindset is what led the Binghamton Film Initiative towards their next project, a collaborative effort with Akram Shibly, a student filmmaker at Buffalo State who also won honorable mention at last year’s SUNYWide Film Festival for his film “Heal the World” in the experimental category.
The two had developed a friendship during the reception of the festival and stayed in contact following its conclusion, during which time, Shibly had presented the BFI with the opportunity to film a post-apocalyptic action script he was co-writing, entitled “Project Nomadic” which has since been described by Lau as being “90 percent shot.”
“The neat thing about BFI is that everyone fits a niche and is eager to play their part to make the production as a whole work perfectly,” Shibly, who co-produced and directed the film said. “They all brought their creative juices to the set while maintaining the integrity of the original vision. I think our styles meshed together perfectly. They were very respective of my vision and in return I gave them the space and guidance necessary to fulfill their creative potential.”
Biunno and Shibly have been working together on “Project Nomadic” for a year.
“We were truly tested as filmmakers and collaborators in the best of ways,” Biunno said. “It was unlike anything either of us have ever embarked on before, but, undoubtedly, it was worth it.”
While “Project Nomadic” awaits completion, the Binghamton Film Initiative once again finds three of their six submitted films selected to the SUNYWide Film Festival, “MIME,” “ANNA,” and “CUL DE SAC.”
“These three films are really special to us,” Biunno said. “All three productions involved so many hours of hard work and dedication by so many talented young filmmakers and we’re incredibly proud that everyone’s work is being realized and appreciated. We like to think that we’ve been growing and getting better in this craft, but it’s less about the films and more about this particular group of filmmakers sticking together and learning the art of filmmaking together as friends. That’s what’s most important to us.”
In the three years since their formation, the Binghamton Film Initiative has seemingly made quantum leaps in its filmmaking abilities.
Yet despite the accolades they’ve accumulated and the constant praise from peers and critics, humility is their greatest quality. They always keep in mind the reason why they set out on their quest about three years ago.
“In a theory and experimental driven cinema program, it creates a situation which inhibits students who are interested in film and visual media production to exercise, learn much needed skill set and experience on set to propel them into the industry and have high-quality films as past work for portfolio,” Lau said. “That is where BFI steps in to encourage and aid students to connect, collaborate and create whatever film projects they would be interested in.”
The latest batch of films selected to the SUNYWide Film Festival are evidence that this group of friends remain as passionate and hungry to create works of art as they did when they first formed; the only differing aspects of their approach is their knowledge of film and experience on sets.
Whether it’s having the rain wash out an entire opening scene of a film or holding auditions in numerous cities, the initiative will continue to adapt and achieve whatever they want, all while raising the status of the cinema program of their alma mater, so when people think of SUNY Binghamton, they think, “Binghamton makes movies.” Yet the biggest thing they take out of it, as Biunno puts it, is the friendship they all share that only strengthens with every project.
“A lot of it has to do with longevity,” Biunno said. “A big reality of college is the nature of how things come and go, people graduate and move on, big ideas fall flat or lose steam. I’m just incredibly happy to still be making films with the people I began collaborating with three years ago. I think it’s really a testament to the belief that we will all be making movies together for a very, very long time.”
