The SFTV Bonn International Film Minor Screenings has been an annual event since 2003, according to Professor Glenn Gebhard, who started the collaboration with Screen and Film with only six students. The study abroad opportunity in Bonn, Germany, is incidentally the longest-running study abroad opportunity at LMU, circa 1994.
Each of the eight who submitted their short films for the showing on Sep. 28 had developed a unique perspective through the lens of film.
In the first edition of this review, LMU Film Students…, The Lion highlighted the welcome cultural exchange through the AiB, or “die Akademie für internationale Bildung.” It’s through this collaboration that LMU student film producer Roberto Parseghian of São Paulo was able to make “Um Coração Ferido Esperançoso,” or “A Hopeful Broken Heart.”
Parseghian’s idea for the film changed and became like “a poem of God. I was just an instrument…as I trekked throughout Germany, talked with my host mom…” he found that the best way to counter resentment or sadness was to do so through love.
Parseghian traveled to Portugal to film four couples married and 3 couples dating. They spit poetry for his muse, allowing the documentary to evolve out of his own trouble with love – that flighty temptress!
The couples taught him that love was finding or seeking forgiveness in others, so that you are free to find real love. The wisest couple, who had been married 60 years, told him, “Without respect, there is no love.”
Parseghian found time in Portugal therapeutic. He captured the beautiful complexity of love while experiencing a cold breakup. A broken heart taught him the maturity of closing one chapter to open a new one, though he admits this film is only about 60% complete.
When asked about other projects, Parseghian described two as ongoing. He explains, “‘Holometaboly’ is a psychological thriller in which a lonely caretaker’s routine is disrupted when the homeowner’s son returns from abroad to throw a delayed belated party, leading to growing chaos and unsettling events.” The other is his first production, “LA Surfer,” a suspense film about a surfing Uber Eats driver who is offered a proposal that could change everything, may put him in danger, and will force him into a moral dilemma.
Either way the young filmmaker chooses to go, LMU gives him the space and support to achieve a masterpiece.
And for those interested, Professor Gebhard adds, “Tell them applications go out in spring for [travel abroad] the following spring!”
