At first, Amherst College’s Stirn Auditorium — this year’s location of the 2020 Five College Film Festival — was almost empty, save for a few students chatting about last-minute preparations. The only indication I was in the right place were the programs on the front table and the festival flyer on the auditorium projection screen. But soon, people started pouring in, filling the air with a sense of artistic pretentiousness and a kind of off-beat humor that only 200 film students could produce.
BY MIRANDA WHEELER ’19
Writer-director Cass Fernandez-Dieguez ’19 has always loved cinema. “I remember when I was little, my grandpa would pick up a camcorder and we would go and make movies,” they said. “It wasn’t until I was in about 11th or 12th grade that one of my teachers noticed I had really strong screenwriting skills. Whenever there was a project, I wanted to do a video project.”
BY ERIN CARBERRY ’19
Following the Five College Film Festival, the Mount Holyoke Film Society and Mount Holyoke Broadcasting Channel (MHBC) hosted their own festival on March 2. The Mount Holyoke Film Festival aimed to showcase the works of students who were not accepted to the larger festival or did not submit entries.
