This week, the 15th annual Tri-Co Film Festival took place in Bryn Mawr, PA, just outside of Philadelphia. The Tri-Co Festival (actually a screening) showcases student projects from Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore colleges. The three colleges (hence Tri-Co) are next door to one another, with Villanova University located just down the street, making for a unique college town.
The festival screening highlights student projects, largely capstone projects for specific classes. This means that not everyone participating is planning to continue with a career in filmmaking with the classes fulfilling requirements for other majors, or being taken as electives.
Ten shorts were screened in total. We try not to review shorts at festivals, as these are often early-career filmmakers, or in this case students and it doesn’t feel right to critique these early-stage works in the same way as commercial releases. That said, it would be hard to single out any of the works, as all ten were well made and held the audience’s attention. The fact that some of the students were merely dabbling in filmmaking didn’t mean the projects weren’t impactful. In some ways, there was a rawness to the projects that had more heart than some projects at traditional film festivals. These were all labors of love, and it’s great to see the three colleges come together to celebrate these works on the big screen at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute.
Screening your work on the big screen for strangers can be a formative experience, far exceeding simply showing the film in class so kudos to the colleges and organizers for making this event possible for their students.