Six MAGIC Films Shot at Bryn Mawr College

By Erin Korth, BMFI Intern

“Welcome to the real Hogwarts,” Magic Camp’s tagline boasts. This award-winning documentary chronicles the lives of campers at Tannen’s Magic Camp, a prestigious convention for young magicians held annually at local Bryn Mawr College. Magic Camp documents the campers as they compete to become the next Houdini, hoping to follow in the footsteps of famous camp graduates like David Blaine. This heart-warming film sees each young magician struggle with his or her own demons as the campers blossom into self-confident professionals.

An aspiring young magician pulls tricks with flair in Magic Camp

In honor of Bryn Mawr Film Institute’s screening of Magic Camp, check out these five other films shot at Bryn Mawr College.

Wide Awake (1998) 
Philadelphia-area native M. Night Shyamalan wrote and directed this 1998 drama-comedy, which tells the story of a schoolboy’s search for God at a Catholic boys’ school. Bryn Mawr College’s sweeping architecture served as a double for Waldon Mercy Academy in Lower Merion, where much of Shyamalan’s filming was done. Wide Awake follows a ten-year-old boy, who, in dealing with the death of his grandfather, seeks the answers to life and death.

Joseph Cross gets advice from baseball-loving nun Rosie O'Donnell in Wide Awake

The Sterling Chase (1999)
Double-cast with Rosemont College, Bryn Mawr played the part of the fictional Chadley University. The Sterling Chase revolves around three highly competitive college seniors, their pursuit of the coveted Sterling Chase Award, and the sacrifices required as each makes serious decisions about the type of person they want to become as they graduate.

The Paradigm Shift (2008)
Bryn Mawr College's signature stone architecture and old wooden staircases act as the backdrop to indie short The Paradigm Shift, the story of a frustrated history professor who asks his students to design a plan to assassinate the President of the United States.

Dare (2009)
Dare was written by BMFI Advisory Council member David Brind and stars top-billed performers Alan Cumming, Emmy Rossum, Rooney Mara, and Sandra Bernhard. The drama follows three graduating high school seniors as they wrestle with issues of identity and sexuality in the months preceding their graduation. Dare premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and received critical acclaim, with New York Magazine hailing it as “surprising and dangerous.”

Dare shoots inside Bryn Mawr College's Taylor Hall

Tenure (2009)
In Tenure, Bryn Mawr College snagged the role of Grey College, a fictional east coast liberal arts school. The quirky indie comedy traces the exploits of down-and-out English professor Charlie Thurber (played by Luke Wilson), whose only aspiration is to be a published, tenured professor. His life gets complicated when the college brings on Professor Elaine Grasso (Gretchen Mol), an impressive new hire whose credentials unwittingly threaten Charlie’s future at the school. Funny-man David Koechner joins Wilson and Mol as Charlie’s best friend and a Bigfoot-obsessed Anthropology professor, who convinces Charlie that the only logical course of action is to sabotage the endearing Professor Grasso’s career.

David Koechner and Luke Wilson prank the new professor in Tenure

Bryn Mawr College’s foray into the film industry has been brief but notable. Experience the fun of seeing this local Hollywood hot-spot on the big screen in Magic Camp, showing at Bryn Mawr Film Institute on December 4. The event will conclude with an appearance by director Judd Ehrlich, and performances by talented young magicians from the camp.

What are your favorite movies shot at local spots?

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Erin Korth is a senior at Bryn Mawr College currently interning at Bryn Mawr Film Institute.

Upcoming CLUELESS Event at BMFI: A Special “Intern-view”

By Meredith Slifkin, BMFI Intern

Attention lovers of teen comedies, literary adaptations, and anyone who has ever uttered the phrase, “as if!”: Clueless is coming to BMFI for a special one night only screening on Thursday, April 7 at 10:00pm! The cult classic, which takes place at a wealthy Beverly Hills high school and is based on the plot of Jane Austen’s Emma, will be shown in conjunction with the senior thesis project of Bryn Mawr College senior (and former BMFI intern) Ivy Howell.

Ivy has been working hard to organize this screening while also writing her thesis, so as a Haverford College alum and current BMFI intern, I know how important it is that we all come out to support Ivy at this event! I caught up with Ivy over email to ask her a few questions about the screening. Read on to hear more about our conversation (intern-to-intern) about the upcoming event and the Clueless legacy.

See Clueless on Thursday, April 7 at 10:00pm, with introduction by Bryn Mawr College Senior and former BMFI intern Ivy Howell

Can you give us a brief description or abstract of your project?

I'm looking at these films as cultural products of the nineties, a period marked by rapid globalization, changing relationships to consumerism, and closer ties between public and private life due to changing media technologies. Keeping in mind this context, I'm examining relationship between gender, class, and race in these films and the relationship these movies have to the larger romantic comedy genre.

I wanted to do something a little more practical too, and, since I've always had an interest in film programming, I wanted to see what it would be like to organize a screening of my own. I'm really excited that BMFI wanted to collaborate with me on this; it's been a stellar learning experience.

What drew you to the topic of 90s teen romantic comedies? What films do you discuss in addition to Clueless?

I've always been conflicted by the fact that I love these films so much, yet, at the same time, I can't help but take issue with certain assumptions and stereotypes that appear over and over again. For instance, most mainstream teen films from the nineties take place in mostly white, upper middle class suburbs. These films put a lot of emphasis on how characters look and dress; as a matter of fact, all the films I examined - Clueless, She's All That, and Mean Girls (which isn't from the 90s, but I think its interesting to compare a post-9/11 film to earlier ones) - have strong makeover subplots where a girl gets made over. Combine that with the idealized fantasy world that these films live in, and I found myself faced with a really rich body of work, with plenty of questions and contradictions to explore in detail.

Alicia Silverstone earns her cult status as the privileged and popular Cher Horowitz

The teen film genre seems to lend itself particularly well to literary adaptations. Could you discuss this phenomenon?

The romantic comedy genre has been around forever, and there are lots of stories to draw from. The romantic comedy tradition, particularly screwball comedies from the 1930s and 1940s, has always been rooted in adaptation, whether plays or novels. Also, Jane Austen novels or Shakespeare plays have a lot of characters and rely upon a social setting with pretty rigid rules about how people interact with one another, two features that lend themselves to depicting the high school experience.

There are quite a few expressions from Clueless that have entered our lexicon. Do you have a favorite line from the film?

"As if!"

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Thanks, Ivy! I definitely agree with her answer to the last question, though up there on my list are also “way harsh” and “Ren and Stimpy, they’re way existential.”

All are welcome at this event, where you can come enjoy the film and learn about the teen comedy genre during Ivy’s introduction. It’s a great opportunity to witness the sort of events that are possible when BMFI works together with its community partners to bring truly unique events to the theater.

Hope to see you there! For now, “I’m outtie.”

Filmmakers Amp Up Screening of ROCK SCHOOL

Producer Sheena Joyce and director Don Argott rocked the house at last night’s screening of Rock School, their 2005 Sundance hit about Philadelphia’s original Paul Green School of Rock. The husband-wife filmmaking team’s first documentary feature focuses on Paul Green, the foul-mouthed (but effective) teacher of a group of remarkable nine- to seventeen-year-old musicians who more than do justice to the music of Frank Zappa and Black Sabbath.

Filmmakers Sheena Joyce and Don Argott sign BMFI's autograph book after the screening of Rock School.

This screening kicked off our four-film series celebrating the contributions that Bryn Mawr College alumnae have made to film in honor of Bryn Mawr College’s 125th Anniversary.

Bryn Mawr College president Jane Dammen McAuliffe introduced Sheena Joyce, class of 1998, before the screening, and both Sheena and Don answered audience questions afterwards. Keep reading for selections from the Q&A!

Q: How did the project come about?
Don Argott: The project took shape because I had a production company with another partner. We had always planned on doing a feature, but mostly we had been doing commercial work and corporate videos. He wanted to go to LA, but I had no interest in going there. After the company dissolved, I wanted to do something creative to remind myself why I was in the business. I was out walking when I saw a poster for the Paul Green School of Rock. It had this cartoony type and caught my attention. This was back in 2002, before everything was online, and so I didn’t have a lot of information to go on, but I dug around a little. Finally, I looked up his number in the phone book and gave him a call. I told him I’d like to do a documentary about him, without ever having met him. He said, “All I ask is that you take it seriously and do it for real.” (Apparently VH1 had been in talks about doing something but then backed out, so he was a little protective.) There was something about our first meeting and we hit it off; it helped that I am a musician, too. Two days later, I was there with my camera, and stayed there for the next nine months filming. Sheena quit her job at the film office and came on as a full-time producer on the project.
Sheena Joyce: I was working at the Greater Philadelphia Film Office, the area's film commission, which acts as a free producer to visiting productions. I wanted to do whatever I could to encourage Don, and I offered to help him with this new project. It started at night and on weekends, but eventually, I got so involved, I quit my job, and we formed 9.14 Pictures together.

Q: What’s Paul Green doing now?
DA: He used this opportunity with the kids to build from there. As we were in post-production he opened up a school in New Jersey and one in Downingtown and used the marketing push from the film to franchise. Now there are 48 franchises across the country. He sold off the company and lives in New York now. He's still involved in music, though, and has a new venture called Studio House.

Q: What was it like seeing the movie again on the big screen?
DA: This is the first time we’ve seen the movie in five years, since it came out. It was amazing seeing the film again. It put me back in the spot of where we were then. I forgot how funny it was! It was so nice to revisit it. It brought back a lot of memories.

Q: What other features have you done?
SJ: After this we did Two Days in April, where we followed four college football players as they entered the NFL draft. The project was funded by Netflix and the film is available on Netflix. We followed that up with The Art of the Steal, about the Barnes Foundation’s move from Merion, which was featured at the Toronto Film Festival and released nationally this year. It is now on DVD and will be on Showtime in October. Currently we have four documentaries we’re working on in various stages of production.

Q: This was your first film. How has your approach to filmmaking changed since, if at all?
DA: We cut our teeth on this thing, we were so naïve. We thought, “No one listens to Frank Zappa anymore, it’ll be easy to get the music rights.” $250,000 later… Rock School was like getting our Ph.D. in filmmaking.
SJ: It was trial by fire, but the real work begins when you sell it. You have to make it “deliverable”—get clearances, photo licenses, releases, music licenses. I would say that our procedures have changed, but our filmmaking hasn’t changed. We still try to bring a rock and roll sensibility to whatever we do—even The Art of the Steal opens with a cover of a Black Sabbath song done by a jazz trio called The Bad Plus.

Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Bryn Mawr College's President, joined BMFI's Juliet Goodfriend (seated)
to welcome filmmaker Sheena Joyce, Bryn Mawr College '98.  

The Celebrating Bryn Mawr College Film Series continues with three additional screenings, starting with Christopher Strong, starring Katharine Hepburn '28, which will feature a talk about the famous alum's influence on cinema by Bryn Mawr College film studies professor Dr. Homay King. Then filmmaker Susan Koch '76 will introduce and discuss her documentary about the Homeless World Cup, Kicking It. The series concludes with the return of Sarah Schenck '87 to Bryn Mawr Film Institute to screen and discuss her first feature film as producer, Virgin, starring Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men) and Robin Wright.