Film Festival Provides Experiential Learning Opportunities

According to Chris Hansen, professor and chair of film and digital media, submitting work to a festival is an important part of the transformational learning and real-world preparation that student filmmakers and screenwriters encounter at Baylor.

“It’s a good experience for students to go through the process of applying to be in a festival and have their work judged by people not involved in making it. The films are evaluated not only on whether they’re good enough, but the festival also is a curated artistic experience. True to industry standards, some films submitted are quality films, but they just don’t fit within the body of the work represented,” Hansen said.

Unlike some festivals, Black Glasses also confers monetary awards thanks to the generosity of alumni and donors.

“It’s not terribly common to have a monetary award, but we felt like when we decided with our alumni partners to do it, that it would be a way to raise the stakes and show the students that we were serious about the work. We hoped it would elevate the level of work that the students were doing," Hansen said.

This spring, the festival will be celebrating 20 years. As a part of the celebration, festival patrons will have the option to purchase tickets that also include a celebratory dinner prior to screening the films. Hansen hopes to grow the audience to include more people from Baylor and Waco area communities.

“Our students are doing really quality work and getting into festivals—not just ours, but other festivals—and audiences can come to Black Glasses and support the arts at Baylor through film.”

The 2019 Black Glasses Film Festival will be held at the Waco Hippodrome on Saturday, April 27. For more information about the festival, visit baylor.edu/fdm.