News & Events

Film as Monument transforms the architecture of the Lunder Arts Center into an illuminated lantern, activating the transparent portals of the university building with artworks produced in community. Traditional monuments, including the physical structures of art museums and universities, are meant to stimulate and structure collective remembrance of events, individuals, or ideas in particular ways. Intended to withstand change, these touchstones for meaning- and memory-making are not always open or accessible to their publics. This temporary intervention, consisting of projected experimental film, digital flatscreens, and hand-painted celluloid artworks, activates the Lunder Arts Center to invite passersby to witness the creative vitality of our communities. The exhibition features artwork from the Film as Installation course, taught by Assistant Professor Ingrid Stobbe, as well as high school students from the West End House Boys and Girls Club, Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and more, who have participated in a series of workshops exploring the materiality and structure of film led by exhibiting artist and experimental filmmaker Gabby Sumney.

This exhibition is a striking collaboration at Lesley Art + Design between Digital Filmmaking, Exhibitions, and LA+D Community Engagement. Presented in partnership with Women in Film & Video New England and the Boston LGBTQIA+ Artist Alliance. Funding is provided through the Ralph Bradley Prize, awarded in Spring 2020.

Show TItle: Film as Monument

Dates: April 1st – April 30th 2021

Times: All Day (best seen at night)

Where: Lunder Arts Center

Address: 1801 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140

Event and Artist Talk Date/Time: April 8th at 7pm

Zoom Link for Event: https://lesley.zoom.us/j/95444682975?pwd=OUhiaXUrb2cxUzFTNDhrYUxyWGU3Zz09

Participating Arists:

Head Artist:
Gabby Sumney

Lesley University Artists:
Barry Mamadou
Michael Cook
Jeff Dubay
Eli Di Giulian
Breanna Flattes
Aidan Hatch
Jonathan Hill
Haley Kinerson-White
Daymian Mejia
Grier Minos
Ash O’Neill
Maddy Perkins
Noah Ramirez
Kieran Rowe
Nicolas Silva

High School Artists:

Cambridge Rindge and Latin School:
Oscar
Lianny

West End House Boys and Girls Club of Allston:
Shaylee
Cha’Ya
Mathew
Jennifer
Isaiah
Asheika

Somerville High School:
Smirline “Nyove” Jacques

Community Charter School of Cambridge:
Mia “Jaxxen” Santiago

A new independent film festival at Lesley University is up and running this spring! LUFF is a student-led film festival supported by Professor Kathleen Mullen. We will be accepting independent short films including experimental, music videos, narratives, documentaries, animation, and other subject matters from anywhere in the world.

The Festival will be held April 24-26, 2021 online, and is the work of the Spring 2021 Digital Filmmaking course Special Topics: Film Festival, taught by Professor Kathleen Mullen.

Festival Entries can be submitted at FilmFreeway, by following the link below:

https://filmfreeway.com/LUIFF

If you would like further information on the Lesley University Independent Film Festival or have any trouble submitting on Film Freeway please contact us at filmfestival@lesley.edu.

New Affiliated Faculty member Gabby Sumney, who joins Digital Filmmaking in Spring of 2021, is one of 10 recipients of the 2020 LEF Foundation Early Development and Pre-Production grants.

The grants are funded through the LEF Moving Image Fund, and awarded to “films that demonstrate excellence in technique, strong storytelling ability, and originality of artistic vision and voice,” (LEF Foundation).

The LEF Program Officer Genevieve Carmel further elaborated, “‘This was the first year that LEF offered a new Early Development grant for four New England-based documentary filmmakers at the earliest stages of their process. We couldn’t be more excited to explore an expansion of LEF’s Moving Image Fund in this way, and this will be a learning process for us, informing how we approach future funding programs. By removing the current visual sample requirement at the Early Development stage, our goal was to learn more about and support projects in development by filmmakers who have not been able to create a visual sample for their current work, whether due to COVID-19 or where some initial seed funding might address the unique requirements of a project.'”

Sumney’s project Paradise, is a personal documentary exploring race, immigration, and imperialism through the filmmaker’s multiracial Caribbean American family. The film is produced by Women in Film & Video New England Board member Nerissa Williams – Scott.

On receiving the grant, Sumney remarked “Paradise started as short film I made in a Visual Ethnography class way back in 2015. It was called Fake Patty then, and it was basically a conversation I had with my grandmother on FaceTime about our heritage intercut with me making a food item that my great grandmother taught me how to cook when I was a child. I had to write a paper about the process as part of my final project, and in that paper I wrote that I could see myself revisiting this as part of a longer film. The LEF Foundation has really provided me with the financial buffer to continue working on this project in a way that I didn’t think would be possible in the pandemic times. I’m still in shock that I was selected and deeply grateful for the support. I look forward to challenges ahead. As someone who gets paid per class, the money from this grant will allow me to ‘buy my time’ to work on this project.”

Gabby joins Digital Filmmaking starting spring semester!

GABBY SUMNEY’S WEBSITE