Bucknell Intercollegiate Film Festival to Showcase State's Top Student Filmmakers May 1

The Bucknell Intercollegiate Film Festival (BIFF) will present a curated program of short films by collegiate filmmakers from across Pennsylvania Friday, May 1, at 7 p.m. at the Campus Theatre, 413 Market St., Lewisburg. The event is free and open to the public.

The approximately 80- to 90-minute program will feature about 10 short films, each 15 minutes or less, selected from among 82 submissions representing 19 colleges and universities. Following the screening, some of the student filmmakers will participate in a question-and-answer session, followed by an awards ceremony and a reception with food and drink.

The festival is programmed by students in Bucknell's Film Programming and Exhibition course, offered by the film/media studies program. This year's class of seven students is responsible for reviewing submissions and selecting the finalists.

Students from the Film Programming and Exhibition course screen submissions to select finalists for this year's film festival. Photo courtesy of Rebecca Meyers

Students in the class serve in a variety of roles, including as pre-screeners, programmers, publicists and event planners. They also handle the logistics for the festival, which typically brings multiple filmmakers to Lewisburg for the screening.

For students, the course offers a behind-the-scenes look at the exhibition world of the film industry and the collaborative process required to bring films to audiences.

"This class was born partly to help students understand my work with the Campus Theatre," says Rebecca Meyers, academic film programmer and lecturer in film/media studies, who teaches the course and directs the film festival. "There’s a lot of responsibility, and students learn there are so many ways into the film industry outside of being filmmakers. They learn how it is that only some films, out of the hundreds and hundreds made each year, reach a theatrical audience."

That was part of the appeal for Sam Bruhin '26, biology, who is leading BIFF's marketing and public relations efforts. She has found evaluating dozens of submissions to be both exciting and demanding.

"It's really challenging because I put myself in the shoes of the filmmakers who submitted these films, and I want to have everybody included, so it's really tough to make these decisions," Bruhin says. "They're all bringing something really unique and showing their talent."

The course also introduces students to the broader film exhibition landscape, particularly the work behind organizing and operating a film festival.

"The film selection process is not the easiest — watching dozens of submissions from other students, knowing that every time you are saying 'no' to a film it means that maybe no one will ever see it at all — so that is a lot of pressure," says Iaroslava Polusmak '28, English — film/media studies and English — creative writing. "However, that makes every decision as precise as possible. Our team is working on selecting the best of the best submissions through our conversations in class.

"Another challenge that awaits us is creating the program itself, after we finalize our list of films," she adds. "Watching films again, thinking about the order in which they should go, how to make them speak to each other, rhyme or collide — this is the part I am looking forward to."

The Bucknell Intercollegiate Film Festival is held every two years and aims to bring audiences together to experience emerging student work in a theatrical setting.