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A Personal (yet honest) Assessment

In the Fall of 2000, a handful of Murray State students met together in the television lobby of the Curris Center. Although their academic backgrounds were varied from art to history to chemistry, they shared one common goal: to make movies, and to get these movies to an audience.

At that meeting, the Murray Independent Filmmaker Association was formed by Chris Schweizer, Brandon Smith, and Jake Bilinski, as well as a number of founding members such as myself and Josh Kitchens. We were actors, we were directors, we were editors, we were producers. Each of us had our own approach to filmmaking; to some of us, it was a chance to let loose and run around on campus as "screwballs with cameras." To others in the group, this was a chance to start a film revolution in Murray.

The first festival that was held by MIFA was at the Curris Center Theater, with an estimated 200 individuals attending for two nights of student produced works. Works ranged from stop motion animation to faux movie trailers to drama. The headliner of the event was the comedy/horror piece, Attack of Lobsterboy, directed by Chris Schweizer.

The following years did not see much success for the club in terms of size. While ambitions had been high that the number of members would swell following the success of the festival, these quickly diminished the following year. Numbers had started high, with around 15 people attending meetings during the second year. These dropped mainly because the original co-founders pursuing their academic interests in full force.

Since that first year, the tides have come and gone, come and gone for the club. Although the numbers are still low, those members who are an active part of the club continue to produce work that has increased greatly in depth and magnitude of skill and quality. This was most noticeable at the most recent festival (December 2005), with the introduction of horror and romantic comedy, two genres that had never been successfully tapped into by the club previously.

This success has breathed new life into the club, it seems. There is now an atmosphere that the scale of the projects has crossed the point of no return; stories now must be more complex, editing must be much cleaner and purposeful, and quality, overall, must continue to increase. Although the festivals have never been competitive, there is now an internal competition amongst the members themselves, a competition within each filmmaker to continue to outdo themselves.

The club remains optimistic about its future, and looks forward to the next festival in December of 2006.