For Community College Students, Sundance Film Festival Offers A Foot In The Door

On a chilly morning earlier this month, six film students huddled in a computer lab in Glendale Community College. In the spirit of concertgoers hoping to score Taylor Swift or Beyoncé tickets, they clicked and clicked on their screens, hoping to gain access to events that could help make their careers.

Next week, these students and their two professors will board a plane to Salt Lake City. They’ll bundle up and head into the snow at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance is the largest independent film festival in the country. The annual event features world premieres and screenings in every genre, from animation to nonfiction. Participants also get a chance to attend panels with filmmakers and actors.

It’s “kind of a mecca for new filmmakers,” said Sharukh Khan, one of the six students making the trek.

It’s “a hub for discussions, collaborations, and exposure to new perspectives,” his classmate, Tatiana Golykh, chimed in.

They had to make a concerted effort to snag seats together for certain screenings or workshops, because they also want a shared experience. Plus, some popular screenings — like the 20th anniversary of Napoleon Dynamite or A Real Pain starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin — can quickly run out.

And so, when one of their peers confirmed a seat at a given event, the entire room rejoiced.

The idea of becoming a filmmaker

Geri Ulrey, Glendale’s media arts department chair, wrote a grant proposal to secure the funding for the trip. Students don’t have to pay for their flight, lodging, or any Sundance programming.

Ulrey began working at Glendale Community College in 2016, after 10 years of teaching at Cal State Northridge. One of the first things she did after becoming department chair was upgrade Glendale’s studio.

Glendale Community College student Malena Wilson celebrates after securing tickets for screenings at Sundance Film Festival.

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In an industry town where USC, UCLA, and AFI tout their powerful alumni networks, “I never want my students to feel like, ‘Well, you're at a community college and you don't have money to go to a real film school, so you're only going to get the cheap equipment,’” she told LAist.

On the surface, the students have little in common. By background, they represent everywhere from L.A. to North Carolina to Canada to Russia. Some of them enrolled in college immediately after graduating high school. Others have returned to school after years, or even decades, of being away. Some are parents. And while some are close to earning their first associate’s degree, some already have a bachelor’s and are looking to launch a new career. Their love of film brought them together.

One of them, Malena Wilson, recently completed an introductory course in sound design.

“It gives you a lot of respect for sound editors,” she said. “You don’t understand the struggle until you spend an entire class just trying to line up footsteps [with images].”

John Edward will also be going to Utah next week. He recently completed a cinematography course that taught him essential skills, like how to set up lights and work a camera. When he looked at the syllabus and saw that there would be an entire class on color, he wondered: “What more could we possibly learn?”

“And then we had a three-hour lecture about color and how it's related to the screen,” he said.

A program that believes in you

Even with a strong foundation, Ulrey said, becoming a filmmaker might still feel out of reach for some students. To counteract that uncertainty, she and her colleagues start by making the department feel welcoming.

“Instead of having people trying to prove themselves to us,” she said, “the presupposition here is: ‘Of course you belong.’”

Fostering that sense of belonging in students and exposing them to the entire breadth of the film industry is part of the impetus behind Ulrey’s grant writing.

Glendale Community College student Tatiana Golykh.

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“My instinct was: ‘We've got promising students who maybe think that they would never in a million years get to go on a trip to Sundance,” she said. “By opening that door, we’re giving them the chance to sit at the same table as everybody else.”

Even students who don’t go to the festival will benefit, Ulrey said, because “they're going to hear about it” and learn about what’s possible from their peers.

Falling in love with film

This year’s cohort is the second to go to Sundance from Glendale. In 2019, Michelle Castillo and five other students made the same journey.

Castillo began her postsecondary journey at UC San Diego, where she’d planned to major in business. But after an isolating year, the campus and the major no longer felt like a good fit. She went to community college to explore her options and “figure it out.”

Castillo signed up for a theater class at Glendale, which she enjoyed. Then, a classmate mentioned the media arts department, with its emphasis on television and film. She signed up for a beginner’s course on multi-camera filming and fell in love. Soon after, she was on her way to Salt Lake City.

“It was really magical, very Winter Wonderland,” she said. “There were a lot of lights everywhere. The little town was very much like what you would see in Gilmore Girls."

But what Castillo remembers most is that, even though she was there on a scholarship, she never felt like an outsider.

“I remember having so many different conversations with random strangers on the bus, because we were all there for the festival,” she said. “Everyone had done something or watched something, and they would ask each other: ‘What did you watch? What did you think of it?’”

Castillo went on to transfer to San Francisco State, where she completed her bachelor’s degree in one year. Now she works at Warner Music Group, which gives her the time and financial security to work on her screenwriting in the evenings.

As a fan of Sofia Coppola and Greta Gerwig, Castillo also aims to direct. And when she talks about that future, Castillo does so with confidence.

Going to Sundance, she said, made her see that: “I deserve a place in the world.”

Building an enduring network

Castillo is still in contact with people she met at Glendale. On top of rooting for each other, she said, she and her former classmates share work opportunities, including well-paid gigs in the film industry.

Her hope is that this year’s cohort will also get a confidence boost and forge strong professional relationships.

For Thomas Greenough, community college has been a delightful whirlwind. They tried learning about film on their own and even managed to co-create a web series. But, through that experience, Greenough realized that to make high-quality work, “you need the resources, you need the equipment.”

Glendale Community College student Thomas Greenough.

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Greenough currently works as a bartender and was reluctant to sign up for school. They dipped their toes into community college with a photography class at Glendale. Then, they took the plunge and signed up for film courses.

“It's been very fun and satisfying to just be like a sponge, because I've never had a formal education like this,” they said.

For CandyJoe Dahlstrom, going back to school was anxiety-inducing. She went straight into the workforce after high school, raised a family, and enrolled at Glendale to learn how to better manage her small business.

Initially, she only signed up for the courses required to earn a certificate in entrepreneurship/small business. “And then it turned out that I really enjoyed taking classes,” she said. “And so, I was like: ‘You know what, this is a lot of fun. And I want to take more.’”

Dahlstrom signed up for courses in the media arts department, and by pursuing those interests, she discovered that she loves editing and sound design. Last spring, she was named producer of a film that was submitted to the Glendale International Film Festival. The film was nominated for “best students’ short,” but didn’t win. Even so, it was an important step forward for Dahlstrom.

That was the first time she went to a film festival. And, she said, it was “also the first time I've ever called myself a filmmaker.”

Dahlstrom is excited to go to Utah. “As a mother, I don't often leave my family and go on, like, solo vacations,” she said. “I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to do some exploring on my own.”