School of Film and Media Studies

Jon Glaser has a conversation with Purchase professor and screenwriter Greg Lisi (Opening Night) about his own journey as both a writer and actor across platforms.

Congratulations on your acceptance to Purchase!

Women on the Verge — A Tribeca Student Shorts Showcase

Cinema Studies alumna Madison Egan returns to campus for a special screening and conversation featuring four international student short films that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

All four films are directed by women and explore young women coming into their own - standing on the verge of something larger than themselves, much like the students who created them.

Following the screening, Egan will discuss the importance of student shorts at major festivals, how filmmakers research and submit to festivals, and what programmers look for when selecting new voices.

Egan served as a Short Film Programmer at Tribeca, where she helped select emerging filmmakers from around the world. This program includes two films from each year she worked as a programmer (2024 & 2025), offering a rare look at how student work reaches one of the industry’s most influential festivals.

Congratulations on your acceptance to Purchase!

Nowhere (1997) directed by the New Queer Cinema director Gregg Araki is presented as a collaboration between the FMS Screening Series and the Cinemaroll Film Journal.

With the release of Nowhere “Araki’s career takes a sharp turn, and not a minute too soon. Though still quite imperfect, it’s a convincing teen movie and a reminder of Araki’s unique, punchy way with youth-culture iconography.” (ArtForum)

Nowhere is “described as a surreal “American Graffiti” crossed with a kinky “Beverly Hills 90210,” as imagined by a punked-out acolyte of John Waters or Andy Warhol.” (New York Times)

Audiences should be advised that the film contains content that could be disturbing to some audiences, such as staged sexual and physical violence.

Andrew Buckland ’94 (Film) returns to campus to share insight on his career that took him from working as an apprentice editor fresh out of film school to winning an Academy Award for Ford V. Ferrari in 2019. 

 A reel of career highlights will be screened, interspersed with opportunities for audience members to ask questions and dialogue with him.

May is “an odd blend of romantic comedy and slasher film. As a child May was lonely, ostracised by the other children for her lazy eye. Her only friend was Suzie, a creepy beatified doll encased in a glass cabinet. Now she is a veterinary nurse and amateur seamstress. With newly corrected vision, she sets out in the world to find love and companionship.” (Eye for Film UK)

Notable for its eerie and cult classic character performances, and staunch late 90s/early 2000s indie horror aesthetics “May herself is an amazingly complex character played so sweetly by Bettis. Layers and layers built on low self esteem, desire for perfection and the love of sewing. Her connections to the people in her life are odd and awkward. Yet, her love of morbid tales and mortality is done with relish and lust. Little hints of darkness are expressed through facial features or the clever use of props. This is where May shines the most. The details.” (The Alternative)

Blue Angel is “the first full-length German talking picture, and it fused the erotic and economic dimensions of “Weimar sexuality” in all its decadence and despair.” (The Guardian)

Shown tonight on 16MM, Blue Angel is on loan from the Purchase Film Archive and presented by Lauren Wren, Purchase College Cinema and Television Studies alumna and former Cinemaroll Journal and Purchase Film Archive student. Following the screening, Ms. Wren leads a discussion of 16MM film and post-grad opportunities for work in archival film.

“The Blue Angel pulls off an amazing trick — it takes an old chestnut of a mismatched love story and follows it through, mainly within the walls of a fantastically low nightclub, yet Von Sternberg’s directing somehow makes it all fresh.” (Feminema)