Learn from guest filmmakers

Hollins film majors benefit from regular vists by internationally recognized artists and scholars.

Guest artists

Hollywood producer E. Bennett Walsh (The Kite Runner, Disturbia, Kill Bill) addressed a capacity crowd in the Wetherill Visual Arts Center's Niederer Auditorium in April 2008.

Filmmaker/actor/writer Roger Guenveur Smith (Do the Right Thing, American Gangster) came to Hollins in 2007.

Tom Noonan, the Sundance Grand Prize-winning director (What Happened Was...) and feature film actor (Knockaround Guys, Last Action Hero, Manhunter), visited the summer screenwriting & film studies program and led acting workshops for graduate and undergraduate film students.

Gulpilil—One Red Blood, the documentary by filmmaker Darlene Johnson about Australian Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil (Walkabout, Crocodile Dundee, Rabbit-Proof Fence) was recently shown at Hollins. Gulpilil and Johnson were both present at the film screening.

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paul Wagner presented his film Windhorse in January 2000. Also, the screening of Four Days (a Paramount release) included a discussion led by the film's screenwriter, Pinckney Benedict, and the film's director, Curtis Wehrfritz.

Film director Lizzie Borden (Working Girls) has lectured at Hollins. Acclaimed Berlin filmmaker Ula Stöckl and German filmmaker Doris Dörrie have each spent a semester at Hollins as artists-in-residence.

Documentary filmmakers Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt) have also visited the Hollins campus.

Sundance and CineVegas Film Festival programmer Mike Plante recently spoke with students about the short film form and presented award-winning short films.

Independent filmmakers Laura Colella, Kevin Everson, Martha Colburn, Bill Brown and Tom Comerford have visited Hollins to show their work and speak with students.

Scholars

Dr. Ray Carney, an authority on American independent filmmaking, including the work of the late John Cassavetes, recently visited campus, presenting alternatives to mainstream moviemaking.

Film scholar Renata Jackson lectured on Maya Deren, one of the early American women filmmakers and an essential figure in avant-garde cinema.

David Bordwell, film scholar and author of standard film texts (Film Art, Film History and On the History of Film Style) has given presentations on campus.