NMSU-Grants hosts student movie night

By Jim Tiffin
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — The creative media classes at New Mexico State University-Grants will host a second movie night in three months, free to the public, at the theater on campus on Oct. 26.

Doug Bocaz-Larson, instructor for the digital media classes at the college, said several films will be shown, including one major film and shorts, all created and filmed by students.

“I originally thought about doing movie nights once a year, but now that we are producing and completing more projects faster, I am rethinking that we might eventually be able to do one every month, (during the fall and spring semesters),” he said.

All the films to be shown Oct. 26 will be documentaries.

“There is kind of a theme night, because we have a guest speaker that night, Erin Hudson, who is a professional documentary filmmaker,” Bocaz-Larson said.

Following the films Hudson will speak about documentaries, and there will be a question and answer session.

The feature film to be shown is on bow making, by Riley Yazzie.

There is also a 15-minute documentary on the wolf sanctuary in Candy Kitchen and two shorts, about five minutes each, one “Midnight Tornado,” has the potential to become a major length feature film, Bocaz-Larson said.

The film is about a modern day superhero, taking a twist on the Zorro stories — making the hero a female who wears a black outfit, a black bandanna and black sunglasses — who fights evil, he said.

The other, “A Boy Who Cried Genie,” features a young boy who asks a genie for three wishes.

Hudson produces full length documentaries and commercials.

“Documentaries are where the money is in film,” Bocaz-Larson said.

“A lot of the cable TV channels are running documentaries, and there is a higher need for those than fictional films,” he said.

The creative media students have also been contracted by the Cibola County DWI program to produce anti-DWI ads which will be broadcast on FOX KASA Channel 2 beginning in November.

Two of those commercials have been shot and are in editing. They will be shown on movie night for the first time ever, prior to being aired on TV.

Refreshments are not allowed in the theater, Bocaz-Larson said.

To contact reporter Jim Tiffin call (505) 287-2197 or e-mail: jtiffin.independent@yahoo.com.