News

Four summer Mondays feature silent films and music

Minnesota State University Moorhead’s Summer Cinema Series enters its 41^st season with four evenings of silent films preceded by live organ music. The Summer Cinema Series is a collaborative project of MSUM’s School of Media Arts & Design and the Red River Chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society.

The Series opens Monday, July 10, with three short films featuring Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. The films are Chaplin’s The Pawnshop, Keaton’s The Blacksmith, and Lloyd’s Never Weaken.  Read the rest of this entry →

School of Media Arts & Design professor Tom Brandau’s latest film, Home Delivery, continues its run on the festival circuit. Set in Baltimore (1974) the dramatic short tells the story of two newspaper delivery boys (one white, one African-American) struggling with the racial divide between their adjacent neighborhoods. The film recently screened at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival, the Langston Hughes African American Film Festival (Seattle), the New York Children’s International Film Festival and the Peace On Earth Film Festival (Chicago). Read the rest of this entry →

School of Media Arts & Design professor Tom Brandau’s latest film, Home Delivery, is having some success on the festival circuit. Read the rest of this entry →

The School of Media Arts & Design played a major role at this year’s South Dakota Film Festival. Last weekend SoMAD faculty including Kyja Kristjansson-Nelson, Don Clark and Tom Brandau accompanied 30 students to Aberdeen, SD for three days of film screenings, workshops and discussions. The highlight of the weekend was watching Film Studies alumnus, Conor Holt, receive the Best Student Film award for his film A Better Life.

Other student and film alumni screenings included: Read the rest of this entry →

Cinema Arts & Digital Technologies professor Tom Brandau’s latest film, “Home Delivery,” will have it’s premiere screening Saturday, March 8 as part of the 2014 Fargo Film Festival. Set in Baltimore (1974) the film tells the story of two newspaper delivery boys (one white, one African-American) struggling with the racial divide between their adjacent neighborhoods. Written and directed by Brandau, produced by Janet Haak (Director of Study Abroad) the film also includes the talents of over a dozen current and former MSUM Film Studies students including Amber Johnson (director of photography) and Ben Efron (editor). “Home Delivery” screens this Saturday, 10:30 a.m. at the Fargo Theatre.

Cinema Arts & Digital Technologies professor, Tom Brandau, was recently elected to the Minnesota Film & Television Board in Minneapolis. In existence for over 30 years, the board’s mission is to create jobs and economic growth by promoting and supporting Minnesota’s film and television production industry. Brandau’s main focus will be to help develop and foster more engagement opportunities/exchanges between the state’s production community and educational systems.

To promote the Eurospring program, Dr. Allan Chapman from Oxford will make his annual visit next week. On Wednesday, Sept. 25, he will lecture on “Ghosts, Spirits, and the Victorians,” at 7:30 p.m. in SL 104. Everyone is welcome to attend the lecture.

He will also host three informational sessions, along with faculty leader Tom Brandau of CADT. These will be held at 2 p.m. on Sept. 25 in CMU 227, and at noon and 4 p.m. on Sept. 26 in CMU 203.

All interested students are invited to the info sessions. Contact haak@mnstate.edu with any questions or visit the Eurospring website.

MSUM’s Cinema Arts & Digital Technologies Department will be holding an open casting call Tuesday, July 30 and Wednesday, July 31 from 6-9 p.m. in room CA 33 (MSUM campus-Roland Dille Center for the Arts). This call is for actors of all ages/all talent levels. All who show up will be added to our Talent Database, which includes a video headshot reel, made available to over 200 CADT Film Production students. No preparation needed. Headshots are welcome, but not required. For more information contact Tom Brandau at 701.446.7818 or brandau@mnstate.edu.

A short film created by five students in MSUM’s Cinema Arts & Digital Technologies Department was accepted into and screened at the International Shorts Program of the Albuquerque Film & Media Experience in Albuquerque, N. M. Guests at the festival included Robert Redford and Giancarlo Esposito, and competing films featured actors Morgan Freeman and Armand Assante. The students’ film, titled “Necropolis,” was one of four American films in the shorts category; six others were international films. “Necropolis” was also an official selection in the 2013 Maryland International Film Festival. Read the rest of this entry →

Students who are interested in Eurospring 2014 are invited to an information session Thursday, April 4 at 1:30 p.m., 4 p.m., or 6:30 p.m. in CMU 208. Faculty leader Tom Brandau; Director of Study Abroad, Janet Haak; and a Eurospring alum from 2012 will be present to answer your questions.

Cinema Arts & Digital Technologies (CADT) and the College of Arts & Humanities (CAH) co-sponsored an Equipment Expo at this year’s Fargo Film Festival. Twins Cities cinematographer (and MSUM alum) Greg Winter and Lighting, Grip & Electric supplier, Mike Bullock, ran the workshop, demonstrating several pieces of lighting and grip equipment and showcasing some of the latest digital video cameras on the market.

Well over 50 people, half of whom were CADT students, attended the expo. CADT professor and festival co-chair, Tom Brandau and former co-chair, Tony Tilton, organized the event.

CADT professor, Tom Brandau, received the Margie Bailly Volunteer Spirit Award at the 2013 Fargo Film Festival. The award is named for former Fargo Theatre Executive Director Margie Bailly. Brandau has been a member of the Fargo Film Festival committee since 2004 and a festival co-chair since 2011.

Thirty students from Cinema Arts & Digital Technologies attended a lecture on adapting literature to film, given by award-winning Minnesota author, Will Weaver. The presentation, “From Fiction to Film”, took place March 4 at the Fargo Main Library and focused primarily on the adaptation of Weaver’s short story, “A Gravestone Made of Wheat” into the motion picture “Sweet Land,” which was shot in Minnesota. The film’s director, Ali Selim, joined the discussion via Skype from Los Angeles and answered several questions posed by the students. All of the MSUM students in attendance were from CADT professor Tom Brandau’s Adaptations class.

Both Brandau and Janet Haak (Director of Study Abroad) accompanied the students to the event.

Cinema Arts & Digital Technologies professor, Tom Brandau, recently co-hosted the 2013 Fargo Film Festival Preview Show with Prairie Public producer, Matt Olien. The 30-minute program, which showcased some of the best films from this year’s festival will air several times over the course of the next week. Brandau has been a co-chair of the festival for the past three years. The Fargo Film Festival runs March 5-9.

A film by MSUM majors in the Cinema Arts and Digital Technologies Department is one of 15 finalists for the 2012 National Film Challenge. The student group that made the film, Cinethusiasts, competed with 103 other filmmaking groups. The film is titled Roleplay Rangers and relates a story about a Junior Ranger’s wife who is forced to take up her husband’s duty to protect a local park.

The MSUM film will advance to a second round of judging, which determines the Grand Prize Winner. The 15 films in the finals will soon appear on the NFC website for Audience Award voting (www.filmchallenge.org). Read the rest of this entry →

Professor Tom Brandau’s film, “The Cleaning Lady” recently received an Honorable Mention at the Bayou City Inspirational Film Fest. in Houston, Texas. The film deals with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Professor Tom Brandau, Cinema Arts & Digital Technologies, was recently invited to teach two master classes at his Alma Mater, Towson University in Baltimore, Md. Brandau screened some of his more recent films and conducted a discussion on transitioning from college to the professional world of film/television production to a group of 40 students and faculty of Towson’s Electronic Media and Film Department. He also taught a master class for Towson’s Theatre Department entitled “Acting/Directing for Stage vs. Screen: The Right Mode for the Right Medium.”

Brandau studied film at Towson as an undergraduate and holds an MFA in theatre from Towson.

The Minnesota State University Moorhead Summer Cinema Series this year features four silent films from the 1920s, and a collection of Buster Keaton short films. The series runs Monday evenings from July 9 through July 30 at 7:30 p.m. in Weld Hall on the MSUM campus.

Founded in the mid-1970s by late MSUM film professors Ted Larson and Rusty Casselton, the series features retrospective showings of some of Hollywood’s greatest stars in popular motion pictures, as well as a few rare, seldom-seen movies. Each film is preceded by a short subject film or cartoon. Read the rest of this entry →

Students and faculty from Cinema Arts & Digital Technologies recently attended a cinematography workshop in the Twin Cities. The workshop, an all day event dealing with the latest in digital camera technology and covering DSLR cameras, camera support, lighting and exposure techniques and production/post-production workflow tips, was put on by the Film Collective (a Minneapolis based film group mostly comprised of recent MSUM Film Studies alumni). Read the rest of this entry →

Cinema Arts & Digital Technologies professor Tom Brandau’s  film The Cleaning Lady will be screened this Monday evening, Jan. 16, at the Fargo Theatre as part of the Fargo Human Relations Commission’s 2012 Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. A dramatic short which deals with the assassination of Dr. King, the film was produced last summer with the help of several current and recently graduated Film students including Amber Johnson (Cinematographer), Ben Efron (Editor) Kate Enge (Asst. Director) and Michael Schreifels (Location Sound). The title role was played by  Theatre Arts graduate Joy Dolo. Brandau wrote and directed the project which was produced by Janet Haak (Director of Study Abroad). The film is also scheduled to screen in February at the Texas Black Film Festival in Dallas.