The McIntyre Library will host its first-ever short film festival on April 29. The event is open to students and community members who want to showcase their filmmaking abilities, watch short films, enjoy movies or anyone looking to have a good time. 

The free festival will be hosted by UW-Eau Claire’s Namaste – Indian Student Association and National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). 

The festival will occur on the lower level of Mcintyre Library and will have multiple awards available to win for acting, cinematography and other categories. 

The films submitted to the festival must include a library, a book as a prop, be between 1-5 minutes long and include the phrase “I like this book” within the movie. 

Anna Zook is the arts librarian at McIntyre Library and one of the event’s creators. A long-time film nerd, Zook wanted to create a “creative outlet” through the event to allow individuals to show off their creative work. 

“I think this is an opportunity to showcase that there’s a need outside of the big theater in Davies for us to have a smaller place to feature films,” Zook said.

“That’s sort of my big picture, really getting people to find ways to express themselves creatively that maybe don’t have an outlet,” Zook said. “It’s to get people to be creative and share and think about libraries and share that love.”

Zook also highlighted the library’s resources for members looking to enter the festival. She discussed McIntyre’s maker space and audio and video equipment, which students can check out. 

“I thought this was an opportunity to really showcase the fact that the library has these digital studio spaces,” Zook said. “We have all this equipment to check out for students. We have video cameras, we have lighting, we have the sound equipment.” 

Rob Mattison, an AV technician for UW-Eau Claire, is accompanying Zook to the festival. Mattison has worked in the video field for over 20 years, created GEEKcon and even hosted his own monster film festivals.

“I want to bring students here,” Mattison said. “I want you to be able to come here as a student. So, we can do our part to get people interested in making it a cooler place.”

Mattison said he is all about “bringing cool creative people together.”  He hopes to do so through this event, just as he has done with GEEKcon and his other film festivals. 

“One of the values that I found when I started 20 years ago was to bring creators together.” Mattison said, “The one thing that we tend to do as creators, we tend to do it ourselves.”

The McIntyre Library short film festival aims to bring people together and show them the library’s creative potential. 

Short films can be submitted between April 1 and April 20. More information about the festival can be found here and Zook can also be reached here. 

Voelker can be reached at [email protected].