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Visiting filmmaker invigorates growing department

Visiting-filmmaker-invigorates-growing-department

Silbia Han | Phoenix Staff

Denise Iris (right) was selected to teach as a new visiting assistant Film and Media Studies professor.

In print | September 10, 2009

In a bid to strengthen the developing Film and Media Studies program, Denise Iris, a distinguished filmmaker, has joined the faculty ranks of the Film and Media Studies Department as a visiting assistant professor. She was chosen from a pool of 150 applicants.

“One of the reasons we hired a new faculty member is that we have been observing an increase in the number of students interested in taking courses in Film and Media Studies in recent years,” Bob Rehak, the film and media studies coordinator, said. The program is small, with only four professors on staff this year, one of them currently on leave, and a number of affiliates.

Iris hails from Romania, but she attended both Brown University and Columbia University in the United States. She has also taught at Columbia. As a filmmaker she explores commonplace situations and images to find their hidden meaning. One of her best known works is the short film “Booyaka,” which explores life in a Brooklyn neighborhood. Her work is appreciated widely in the artistic world. Her films have been screened in places such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and she has received many grants and awards, such as the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Her website (www.minimentals.com) shows a collection of her short film forms.

At Swarthmore, Iris is teaching classes in Screenwriting and Advanced Video Production.

The hiring process was a very long one. Film and Media Studies Professor Simon Sunka said that the department put up ads in some of its field’s publications.

After many interviews and after evaluating the candidates, the search committee narrowed the number of candidates down to four. The candidates came to campus and gave presentations, and students gave their feedback on each of them.

Rehak explains that the committee chose Iris because they wanted to strengthen the production end of the curriculum. “She is very dedicated to film production. We want to talk to someone who is as passionate about film as we are,” said Kat Clark ’12, one of several students in Iris’s class who took a Video Production class with Bob Rehak last spring.

Both Peter Liebenson ’11 from the Search Committee and Sunka stress how important it was for the new professor to have narrative filmmaking experience as opposed to one in the documentary field. “We had done a lot of documentary. We wanted to expose the students to something new,” Simon said. Simon added that Iris was highly recommended, and that “her stuff was very intriguing.”

Iris, too, was excited about her new colleagues. “I am very much interested in my colleagues’ areas of scholarship. That was one of the things that drew me here. I wish I could be a student so I could take Bob Rehak’s Conspiracy class,” Iris said.

Her students, in turn, are excited for the coming semester and how Iris’s classes will unfold. “We’re all waiting to see what she will do next,” Clark said.