Love Talk Film Festival

Phew! I can't believe that it's finally over! And by "it," I mean this semester. Holy cow. This fall has been one of the busiest fall semesters I have ever had. And ONE of the contributing factors to this chaos was the fact that I was organizing the First Annual (hopefully) Love Talk Film Festival.

I taught a class this fall called Communication in Romantic Relationships and their big, individual project was to answer a research question about romantic relationships. Each student could choose between writing a 15-20 page paper or making a 10-20 minutes mini documentary answering their chosen question. Luckily, 12 out of my 17 students picked the film option. I got some great sponsors for the festival including, Jimmy John's, Sweet Frog, Old Fashioned Kettle Korn Company, Jack Brown's Bar & Burger Joint, the JMU Bookstore, the School of Communication Studies, Smoothie King, and Fandango. We had kettle korn, bottled water, and goodie bags filled with candy, chocolate, chips, and some prizes (like free sub coupons from Jimmy John's and free frozen yogurt cups from Sweet Frog!). On Monday and Wednesday of this week, we screened all 12 films and the audience evaluated each one. It was a ton of fun and I will definitely be doing it again next year.

From left: Laura Snyder (Top Paper Award), Callie Timpanaro (Third Place Film), me, Liz Kettler (first place film), & Danielle Blot (Second Place Film)

Here are the winning films:

The First Place Film 

"Happily Ever After: It's Not

a Fairytale. It's a Choice."

by Liz Kettler

The Second Place Film

"It's the Little Things: Making Sense of
What Couples Can't Seem to Agree On" 
by Danielle Blot

The Third Place Film

"Is Facebook to Blame? Exploring the Effects
of Social Media on Romantic Relationships" 
by Callie Timpanaro