The Bucknell Intercollegiate Film Festival (BIFF) will showcase the best and brightest young collegiate filmmakers in Pennsylvania by presenting premieres of their short films (each no longer than 15 minutes) on Sunday, April 28, at 7 p.m., in the Campus Theatre, 413 Market St, Lewisburg. The event is free and open to the public.
The student-run festival has a mission to showcase films made by Pennsylvania college students. The festival program will be approximately 80 minutes long and feature around 12 student films, selected by the 14 students in Bucknell’s Film Exhibition and Programming class in the English — Film/Media Studies program.
This year BIFF received over 100 submissions.
“Every film was seen by at least two students in the class who serve as pre-screeners. Then the film goes on to the programming committee,” explained Gana Mukhtar ’24, a member of BIFF’s publicity committee. There are discussions and passionate debates. “Then we vote on those films that make it through and a certain number rise to the top. We make final decisions on the number of films based on the allotted programming time.”
Following the screening of all the selected films, the student filmmakers will be invited on stage to answer questions from the audience. The program will conclude with a reception and an awards ceremony in which the recipients of the top juried and audience awards will be announced.
“Watching student films, especially with the filmmakers who made them, is one of the most fun experiences you can have in a theater,” says Jamie Granato ’25, who serves on the festival’s events and pre-screener committees. “There’s this really unique and exciting energy watching the hard work of your peers and seeing how they’re growing as artists, completely different from watching a feature film from big studios and directors. And I can say personally, the chance to see your film in a venue and on a screen as stunning and huge as The Campus Theatre is an opportunity that not a lot of student filmmakers have, which makes the festival really special.”
Ella Miller ’26 is on the publicity committee for the festival along with Mukhtar and four peers; they’ve dedicated a lot of time and energy into advertising the event with a range of publicity efforts, including “making a trailer, logo, posters, sending out emails, [and] creating and updating the BIFF Instagram page.” Because of all of the work they haveput into the festival, Miller said that she and the rest of the team are even more excited to see it all come together.
Students who submit to and attend the festival need not have any “official” association with the film department. Miller is a Biology and Environmental Science major, but each semester, she “tries to take at least one class outside [her] major to learn new things and explore all Bucknell has to offer.” Bucknell’s Intro to Film and Media course was that elective for her freshman year and ever since, she’s kept up an active role in the community— “curating and assembling [the 2024] festival […] has been an incredible experience,” and a memory she’ll treasure.
Of the films themselves, Miller has nothing but glowing reviews. “Each individual film was so unique and intriguing,” she says, and the films they curated to show at this year’s festival showcase “the best in terms of style, composition, and intention.” Everyone who participated in submitting to or curating the festival is excited to show Lewisburg what Bucknell’s film community has to offer.
