Designing Winners: UC Projects Prized in International Film Festival

Two University of Cincinnati projects – projects that, in very different ways, turn the lens on how we live – will soon receive recognition from the prestigious Columbus International Film and Video Festival.  For more than 50 years now, the festival has awarded its highly respected Chris statuettes to film and video makers around the world, and during this year’s festival from Nov. 6-9, UC associate professor Karen Monzel and 2003 UC grad Matthew Broerman will receive recognition for separate projects.

Monzel, associate professor of design in UC’s

College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning

(DAAP), will receive a Chris Award – the highest prize presented in the festival for a film or video production in each subject matter category – for her digital exploration of the town of

Seaside

, located on the Florida panhandle.  The Seaside community began to take shape in 1982 and is well-known in architecture and planning circles as the pre-eminent example of a design movement called the “New Urbanism.”  New Urbanism emphasizes “livable” communities where entertainment, shopping, food and markets are all within a short walk of any home.  Neighborhood design as well as the architecture of each home and building encourages close-knit interaction among residents and visitors.

“Three years ago, I had the idea of simply creating a virtual tour of Seaside for architecture and planning students so they could really see its details, like the way houses are oriented around the front porch and how that serves to invite life out on the street into the house and vice versa.  It’s pretty hard to take a 900-mile field trip to see it.  That’s why I wanted to create the virtual tour,” explained Monzel, who began her project three years ago with $5,000 in funding from a UC Faculty Development Grant and a $2,000 UC Pogue-Wheeler Travel Fellowship. 

The project quickly expanded from a simple virtual tour to its final form, a CD-ROM that not only contains a virtual tour, but also an array of still images and in-depth information about the architects (and their buildings) represented at Seaside.  “Up till now,” said Monzel, “The only information available to us in the profession has either been a photo book on Seaside or a very academic work.  There were really no good sources for people who wanted both the academic information and a rich visual resource.”

Monzel didn’t work alone on the project for the past three years.  Undergraduate and graduate students assisted as did Marty Plumbo, assistant professor of design, who aided with the programming.  Her “Seaside” CD-ROM is already on sale at Seaside, and it will be used for educational purposes in architecture, design and planning classes at UC and elsewhere.

Along with Monzel, recent DAAP graduate Matthew Broerman will also be recognized for his work, done while he was a UC student.  Broerman is among the festival’s student winners for his mini-documentary titled “This is Our Slaughterhouse.”  The project, which took about nine months to complete, has already been named the Best Short Documentary in the September 2003 Great Lakes Film Festival held in Pennsylvania. 

This is Our Slaughterhouse is not what you think.  It’s no Upton Sinclair expose.  Rather, Broerman turns the lens on his own rural Ohio roots, family and community.  His family happens to operate a small poultry processing business in rural Fredericktown (near Columbus), but the film really explores the ties that bind the family, workers and neighbors.  The plant simply serves as the unusual backdrop, setting the stage for the rhythm of human interaction. 

Broerman, who was 10 years old when he himself began working in the family business, completed the film during his senior year at UC.  He recalled, “I liked shooting the film…going home every weekend… The hours were pretty early though.  I got up at 5 a.m. most days to set up before everyone got there.  Towards the middle of the project, it got pretty daunting because you have all this video, but you don’t really know if you have what you envisioned.  That was probably the hardest part.  Taking all this video and trying to make something that other people want to see.”

Before showing at the Columbus International Film and Video Festival, “This is Our Slaughterhouse” will show at the Independent Film Festival which starts Nov. 1 in Cleveland, Ohio.