Santa Fe’s biggest film festival has kicked off, with events around town and on the SFUAD campus through Oct. 23.

From this year’s Santa Fe Independent Film Festival’s Shorts Program, nine films were selected and screened under the category of New Mexico Shorts. This category required that a portion, if not all, footage be shot in the state. In supporting the origins of the festival, Executive Director Jacques Paisner said that when organizers started their screenings five years ago, they were in fact New Mexico filmmakers, and believed other filmmakers from the state “deserve[d] to play for a full house.” In his introduction to the New Mexico Shorts Program on Oct. 16 at Santa Fe’s Center for Contemporary Arts, Paisner invited the directors to present themselves to their audience, who ranged from students to seniors. “These young talented people are the future here in Santa Fe,” Paisner said, motioning to the young filmmakers.“It all starts with their vision. At the beginning, we’d often show almost any New Mexico film because we wanted to be supportive, but this year the competition became tougher than we’ve ever seen it. Each film you’ll see is a testament to that.” Indeed, after the screening was over, I felt—as a film student, a New Mexico resident, and annual SFIFF attendee—that every film demonstrated an inspiring amount of hard work, along with some quirky and enchanting stories.   88 Miles to Moscow, directed by Karen Clienke SFIFF Description: Niki may have missed the train, but don’t miss the heart of her story: a mother-daughter relationship in all its beautiful complexity. For any woman who remembers those uncomfortable talks with an obnoxiously protective mother, Karen Glienke’s 88 Miles to Moscow is relatable and all the more comedic. The film utilizes an interesting technique of cross-cutting between two main scenarios: the young Niki hitching a ride with a strange Russian boy (after missing...

“The best short films are student shorts,” says Jacques Paisner, executive director and co-founder of the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival. In its fourth year, the festival’s four-day event, Oct. 16-20, will be held at the Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA), Lensic Performing Arts Center, The Screen, and the newly opened Jean Cocteau Cinema in downtown Santa Fe. Dedicated to screening independent films, Paisner shares that a good amount of the festival’s 2013 submissions, as of March 1, came from the student population. Filmmakers, like those from SFUAD’s Film School are provided resources, “great equipment,”as Paisner puts it, which allows for the ideal collaboration experience. “If you’re in directing class…you’ll work with a writer from the writing class and that creates a really good short film,” he says. Furthermore, the shorts can act as a “calling card” because, according to Paisner, the festival circuit is one of the only places students gain exposure. It is here they can say,”‘look I’m a student filmmaker, collaborate with me.” For two of SFUAD’s own film students, the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival was a tremendous opportunity to expose their work. “We were planning on entering the festival before we shot the film,” says SFUAD film major Seth Fuller, whose film U46-Anomaly (Anomaly in the SFIFF listings) will be screened for the SFIFF at 9 p.m., Oct. 16 at the CCA. “We went into it trying to make it as polished as possible, to be a product to showcase what we are capable of. With that being said, we wanted to focus on the local community first since we are local filmmakers.” Fuller’s 13-minute short, shot last year in collaboration with New Mexico local Scott Hussion (producer) and fellow student Emmett Meade (producer/editor), is categorized as a sci-fi drama and...