Light and Shadow: Undergrad has work shown at Cindependent Film Fest

Long Pham's "Cinehouette" plays with the concept of silhouettes: a darkness defined by its interplay with light, reduced to a stark outline.

In a sense, the five-and-a-half-minute film functions as a silent meditation on the topic from the perspective of a camera capturing its own shifting shadows.

"I made it to explore the materiality and immateriality of digital film media," explained the Binghamton University senior, a cinema major. "Shadow has been used throughout human history as a metaphor for the representation of life, such as with Plato's cave."

"Cinehouette" was chosen for exhibition this fall at the Cindependent Film Fest on Sept. 21 in Cincinnati, Ohio. After a 10-hour road trip with his friends, Pham stayed at the Hilton Netherland Plaza in Cincinnati, paid for by the festival.

His experimental film showed alongside those of experienced working artists - an honor that struck him as a college student submitting his first film.

"I've been to film festivals before, but this was the first time I went as a nominee," he recounted. "We arrived at this fancy hotel, and it was mind blowing. I was thinking, Did I make it? I'm so lucky to be here because I'm still a student."

His initial interest in arthouse cinema took a more experimental turn after he attended last year's Student Experimental Film Festival at Binghamton. A class in experiment film further developed his interest in the field. After graduation, he plans to work as an artist before pursuing a master's degree in cinema, he said.

He's currently working on a new film, centered on footage he took during his Cincinnati trip. His approach to the project is less documentary and more poetry, with a touch of transcendence, he said.

"Cinehouette" itself took shape in more familiar locales, even though its meaning is more cosmic; he shot it mostly in the Lecture Hall basement, with some footage from his home in Syracuse.

"In this case, I thought of the shadows as a doppelganger for a real-life object. The camera interrogates its own existence," he said.