An International Short Film Festival Premieres at George Washington University

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As their final project in a unique George Washington University writing course called Not Another Home Movie, students make a short personal film. Juliana Augustine, a junior studying international affairs and security policy, produced a testament of love and grief after losing her "soul dog," Bear.

Jeremiah Engermann's dad loves his family. He also loves barbecue and working out at the gym. The application of the word, love, in such disparate contexts made Engermann, a junior chemistry major, curious-so he made a film exploring its meaning through interviews with his parents.

International student Romolo Cerra, a junior majoring in finance with a minor in economics, made a short film, "Family, Then Everything Else," focused on the personal philosophy that guided his father as he coped with trauma.

The course is taught by Hanan Daqqa, lecturer in writing in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. Augustine, Engerman and Cerra are three of her former students. Their films are among the 16 finalists (selected from more than 500 submissions) to be shown at the Not Another Home Movie Film Festival, Friday in the Jack Morton Auditorium. Daqqa said that audience members are in for a treat.

"They will be impressed and touched by the power of family stories, and they will relate," she said. "They will be able to believe that their own stories matter too, and that they can tell them in a meaningful and artistic way."

Five prizes will be awarded. The first, for best storytelling, is an award of $800. The winner will be selected by judges from Daqqa's company, DaQQa Productions.

A new art form prize will be awarded to a film that breaks new ground in form, technique or narrative. The winner will be given two nights at the All-Movie Hotel, a postproduction facility and hotel in Peachtree City, near Atlanta. The judge for this award will be Akshay Bhatia, a former assistant to Francis Ford Coppola, who will also deliver the festival's keynote address.

The remaining three awards are sponsored by GW's Institute for Socioeconomic Opportunity(ISEO). There are two opportunity awards, each one a $500 prize for an international entry (films from Italy, Spain, Turkey and Iran will be shown) "illuminating and advancing themes of empowerment, equity or transformation." There will also be a $200 award given to the audience favorite, after voting at the event. The first two opportunity winners will be selected by a panel of five judges headed by Wendy Ellis, assistant professor of global health at the Milken Institute School of Public Healthand director of the ISEO program.

Festival entries must be true stories no more than five minutes in length and must include an interview with at least one family member. These films differ from the typical home movie, Daqqa said, in that they reflect on the past and search for meaning.

"I want people to see the power of their stories," Daqqa said. "We cannot evolve and become who we really are unless we understand what has happened to us. And we cannot understand until we tell that story. In the process of telling the story, new doors open."

Her mission, Daqqa said, is not so much to reinvent home movies but to make storytelling accessible.

"People underestimate the value of their story," she said. "They think they don't have a story, but in truth they just don't know how to tell it. For some reason, storytelling is not accessible in our culture. You have to go to graduate school to be taught to tell a story artistically. My students can write any research paper, but they have never been taught to be introspective or tell a story."

The Not Another Home Movie class and festival grew out of Daqqa's work toward her master's degree in film at Emerson. She had been a TV host in Saudi Arabia before coming to the United States, so for her first assignment-to conduct an interview on film-she initially thought of talking with a government official or an author. Instead, her professor suggested she interview the people surrounding her in daily life, so she interviewed three of her four children (the fourth was still a baby). Watching her three-year-old son's reaction to the film, she realized it was an important family keepsake.

"He would invite his friends, 'Come watch my movie,' and he would feel so proud. But looking into the eyes of his friends I saw they wanted their own family films too. When my son entered high school, he watched the movie again and I heard him say, 'I want to connect to that bubbly boy again.' And he did! So I realized the power of this film."

Festival finalists range in age from 19 to 65 years old. Their films were selected by a panel of four judges: Mark Yoffe, librarian in the Global Resources Center in Gelman Library; Mark Ricche, an award-winning local filmmaker; Jan Roberts-Breslin, professor in the visual and media arts and dean of graduate and professional studies at Emerson College; and GW student Marcel Richardson Villenas, a junior majoring in journalism and mass communication.

"This is not your typical movie night," Daqqa said. "This is the cultural shift we have been waiting for, where social media platforms shift from self-expression to meaningful and artistic storytelling. Come see how 11 global filmmakers and 5 GW student filmmakers used their voices, their true stories, home movie clips and family photos to create films that awaken and move."

The Not Another Home Movie Film Festival, beginning at 6 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 20, in Jack Morton Auditorium, will be streamed over Zoom. For all tickets, virtual and physical, click on this link. Admission is free for GW students; there is a small fee for the public.