Riley Lecture features filmmaker Roxy Toporowych as speaker

Dance Professor Chase Angier, left, interviews friend and filmmaker Roxy Toporowych during the 2025 Riley Lecture, held Tuesday in Nevins Theater.

Ukrainian-American film director, producer and writer Roxy Toporowych delivered the 2025 Elizabeth Hallenbeck Riley and Charles P. Riley Lectureship in Women's Studies Tuesday in Alfred University's Nevins Theater, telling a near-capacity audience, "Making art is doing something. …You get better at what you do; you find collaborators, you find your voice and your theme. If you're making something, you're doing something."

She added: "Keep making things."

Toporowych, a native of Parma, Ohio, showed clips from her movies including her award-winning debut feature film, "Julia Blue." She won the Special Jury Prize for Best Director World Cinema at the Woodstock Film Festival and the Best Director Award at the Sonoma International Film Festival for that film, which was released in 2017.

In between showing clips of her works, Toporowych discussed filmmaking with Alfred University Dance Professor Chase Angier, Performing Arts Division, with whom she had become good friends years ago while living in Brooklyn. Toporowych and Angier sat on the Nevins Theater stage, sharing reminiscences and discussing a range of subjects, from current events in Ukraine to getting started in the film business. Toporowych is a New York University Tisch alum.

"Current politics "just make me want to make for movies," Toporowych said, referring to on going projects in difference genres, including horror.

In addition to delivering the 2025 Riley Lecture, Toporowych also visited numerous classes during her stay in Alfred. Wednesday evening, she also hosted a showing of Julia Blue.

In introducing the 2025 Riley Lecture, Professor of Modern Languages Sandra Singer noted Tuesday was the 30^th anniversary of the lecture, which has been supported by Alfred University alumni Pamela Riley Osborn '62 and Patricia A. Riley '65, and their sister Melissa Riley in memory of their mother and father, Elizabeth Hallenbeck Riley '363 and Charles P. Riley '35.