Take XII Student Film Festival
LSU Shaver Theater
May 3
Penguins invite their sworn enemies over to dinner. A night watchman confronts his past. A barista is stuck in her own fantasies about her future as an actress. These are among the plots of the 17 short films shown at the annual Take Student Film Festival at LSU.
The festival is organized by a class of students who jury and judge the films that will be shown. In front of a full theater of students, friends and family, the festival screened the super cut of the films which ran just over two hours.
The films for the 12th annual film festival ran the gamut of themes and genre. The organizers organized the different films in an order that allowed each film to breathe.
The intense film about the barista fantasizing about being an actress, “See Into Illusion,” was a deep commentary about the addictive nature of ambition. The main character can’t do anything but stare into her dream world on an old TV, forsaking sleep, paying rent, and all other human connections. She’s a zombie at her job at the cafe. The vision of the future gives her hope, but it also stops her from doing much else, even working toward her goals. This deeply existential film is followed by the deeply unserious animated short, “Kosmokot” about space cats sabotaged by a cabal of mice who have taken over and rerouted the ship.
After the screening, the audience was invited to scan the QR code and vote in the audience choice awards. The winner, “$5 Margaritas,” is a comedy about a new, inexperienced server in the restaurant industry hired on during a busy shift. The film itself is funny and chaotic in the best way. It was elevated by the performance of the protagonist Claire as embodied by Maya Mitchell. Claire (or Candice or Connie as everyone keeps calling her throughout the film) is naive and unqualified for the job. She listed her grandma and her kindergarten teacher as references — and her grandma was her kindergarten teacher.
Mitchell is able to embody the awkwardness of a new person on the job while also winning the audience over with her endearing smile and doe-eyed expressions. Watching someone who has no idea what they’re doing could be frustrating, but with Mitchell, you can’t help but root for her, and the other characters seem to as well. Despite her mistake, which ends up disastrous for not just the restaurant but the whole staff, she’s still welcome to join them outside to smoke at the end of the day.
When she suggests they go out for drinks with a simple "... so... drinks?" they all actually want to go. And it’s believable. You’d want to go too.
