Films, among other forms of art, are created to spark conversations and bring people together. But the platforms and communities that share these pieces of art are just as critical.

This year, the 26th annual Santa Cruz Film Festival (SCFF) featured 14 films made by UC Santa Cruz Film and Digital Media (F&DM) undergraduate students and alumni. For many UCSC F&DM students, SCFF is an opportunity to share their films and interact with fellow filmmakers and artists.

Since its founding in 2000, the festival has screened over 2,000 independent films; and this year screened through five venues: the Del Mar, Rio Theater, Colligan Theater, The 418 Project and Santa Cruz Cinema.

“It seems like a great way to bring people together and get people learning from each other and just creating a community around filmmaking,” said Noah Boyce, a third- year exchange student whose film “The Six Seconds” was featured in the festival. “I’m very lucky to be part of that.”

Boyce studied filmmaking for two years at the University of Sussex in England, and chose an exchange program at UCSC to continue studying film. After hearing about the SCFF through FilmFreeway, an international platform that allows filmmakers to submit their films to different festivals around the world, he knew that UCSC was the place for him.

Writer and director Noah Boyce directs his actors on the set of “The Six Seconds” in the Norfolk countryside. A microphone is set up on a c-stand and a crew member holds a reflector, bouncing light onto the actors.

Noah Boyce carries a camera on the set of “The Six Seconds.” Photo courtesy of Noah Boyce.

Boyce’s short experimental film follows a young man whose father is terminally ill. He imagines what he would say to him during his final six seconds. 

Nearly every shot is six seconds long. 

“Short films are an interesting format of filmmaking because you need to condense something that’s really impactful and meaningful into ten, five, three minutes,” he said.

Boyce believes the film industry, with events like the SCFF, is seeing a new generation of filmmakers. 

“These are filmmakers who grew up making films on iPhones, editing on CapCut or iMovie and got straight hands-on [experience] from a very early age,” Boyce said. “I think it’s breathing a new kind of soul back into filmmaking.” 

Alongside “The Six Seconds,” Jackson Dunn, Adam Shai, Ollie Sauve and Jack Bacchetti’s film “Mel,” will be among the student films featured.

“The [element of] obsession was the bridge between ‘A Call to Mel’ and the other film we were adapting called ‘In the Back Door 2,’” said Jackson Aubrey Dunn. 

[Left to right] Undergraduate UCSC Film & Digital Media students Adam Shai Gulzman, Jackson Aubrey Dunn, Jack Probst-Bacchetti, and Ollie Alaya Sauve, the directors of “Mel,” pose for a photo outside McHenry Library.

“Mel” follows a young man who, after being rejected by his crush, develops extreme and obsessive behaviors. The idea for the film started off as an assignment to take a project that one of their peers made and adapt it. 

“We just decided that we wanted to take two projects that had no business being together, together,” the group said. 

Brought together by their sense of humor, the group wanted to approach the assignment and class as a sketch comedy.

“The intersection of absurd comedy and horror is a good vessel,” Dunn said. “The themes came to be a mediation on modern romance and digital landscape. You hear so many people saying things like ‘Oh, my dating life is a nightmare,’ and it’s sort of an exaggeration of what it might be like to be involved with someone romantically in the 21st century.” 

After turning in their initial assignment, their professor suggested they submit it to the film festival. 

“When the audience is seeing it, they’re going to be able to see their own hometown in it or where they live or where they go to college and they’ll be like ‘I’ve been there,’” Sauve said. “That’s always really fun to see in movies because you feel more connected to it. They’re at the Santa Cruz Film Festival watching a movie made in Santa Cruz by Santa Cruz students.”

Behind the scenes photos from the set of “Devour,” a black-and-white experimental short film directed by UCSC undergraduate student Oliver Connolly Kidd. Photos courtesy of Oliver Kidd.

Director Oliver Kidd shoots a close up of Iz Berman [left] and Phoebe Mason [right] while a crew member holds a panel light. Photo courtesy of Oliver Kidd.

[Left to right] Oliver Kidd, Iz Berman, and Phoebe Mason behind the scenes of “Devour”. Photo courtesy of Oliver Kidd.