Let Your Light Shine | Ann Sorenson

What does it look like to pursue Christ and your craft—especially when failure is part of the process? Join as we sit down with Ann Sorenson, Chair of the Department of Media Arts and Professor of Film, to talk about the power of being still, failing magnificently, and creating work that reflects God’s light.

Professor Sorenson will talk through her journey from launching the film program to celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Five16 Film Festival, and how film at UNW has grown into a very impactful program. 

Learn more about the Five16 Film Festival: Click here

Learn more about the Department of Media Arts: Click here

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💬 Know an alum, faculty member, staff, or student of UNW doing amazing things out in the world? Let us know at alumni@unwsp.edu. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Join as we highlight the people, the purpose, and the pulse of Northwestern. This is the Unwavering Podcast.

SPEAKER_04 0:23

Hey everybody, this is Monty. And Cassie. And welcome to another pulse episode of the Unwavering Podcast. And Cassie, today's an important day. It is May 4th, so I have to ask: what is your favorite thing from Star Wars?

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Oh, well, the female power, I think. They have great female characters. They're commanders, they're warriors, they're amazing.

SPEAKER_04 0:48

For anybody who's listening, you're not gonna fully appreciate this, but Cassie, thanks for going all out and putting your hair into that bun like Princess Leia today.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Yeah, absolutely. A double bun near the ears. I'm ready.

SPEAKER_04 0:58

Well, the force is with us as we go into this podcast episode, and it's good because we have a force of a guest on our podcast today. Today, we get to sit down with Ann Sorensen. Anne serves as a film and media professor and the chair of the Department of Media Arts here at University of Northwestern St. Paul. She pioneered the film track in the media program, and she received her MFA in film from Columbia University. During her time in New York City, she received a New York Women in Film nomination and a Directing the Actors Fellowship from Columbia University. Before joining the media team here at Northwestern, she served as the theater director at Mini Haha Academy for 12 years and worked at KSTP TV and Kara Levin as a production assistant for The Good Company and the Pat Miles Entertainment Show. She's also a founding member of the Minnesota Women in Film and Television. And it's so good to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Thanks, Monty. Thanks, Cassie. It's so nice to be here. I I love your energy and I'm ready to talk about all things film and story.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

We're so excited. Well, speaking of accomplished women, that's that's you. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

I'm so excited to learn from you today. It's always nice to hear myself talked about in that way because I feel so impressive, but I really don't usually feel that way. So thank you, Mati, for just reading. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:20

If only I knew what an MFA actually is. What does MFA actually stand for?

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Thank you for asking, because oftentimes people don't know. It's a master's degree of fine arts, which is a terminal degree in the fine arts arena.

SPEAKER_04 2:34

Wow, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

But that you nobody calls me doctor, and they shouldn't. It's you don't get called doctor, but it's a terminal degree.

SPEAKER_04 2:40

Well, we can on this episode if you want to.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Oh, I'd love it. Yeah. Dr. Sorensen. Dr. Sorensen.

SPEAKER_04 2:44

Um, thanks for joining us. And fun that you were a theater director too. Are you a big fan of the plays here at Northwestern?

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Oh, I love them. And now that we have an eight-year-old, she loves them too. Oh, all the time. It's so fun. Great.

SPEAKER_04 2:57

Okay, so this is a pulse episode, which means we're kind of rapid fire and right out of topic. Um, so here's what I'm thinking for today. Here's where I want to go is I want to get a high level of the Department of Media Arts. Just what is this department all about for anybody who is not familiar? And then I want to dive deep into the 516 Film Festival because we celebrated a big milestone this year, which we will get into. Um, but before that, we have a couple opening questions just to get to know you a little bit better.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

That's right. We're just starting light here. What is the Lord teaching you in this season?

SPEAKER_00 3:31

The Lord is teaching me to be still and know that he is God, to slow down, to be present, to ask for help, to seek his will, and to be still. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

We all need that.

SPEAKER_04 3:48

I did have some thoughts. I was just practicing being still.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Oh, good. And that lasted, let's check, three seconds. Three seconds.

SPEAKER_04 3:56

It's so hard to be still. I cannot be still. Anne, how are you doing with being still?

SPEAKER_00 4:01

So I try to begin a Sabbath on Saturdays so that I could work on being still and not working. The first thing I said to my husband, David, was, David, I'm Sabbathing. Could you please go down and get the laundry and bring it up?

SPEAKER_04 4:14

So be still is delegating better.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

His Sabbath starts later. I know. So it is hard because we run on, at least for me, being productive, getting things done, moving the ball down the courts. But sometimes doing that means to just be still and pay attention to our kids, to what God's doing. And then maybe it's like that next run down the court is in double time.

SPEAKER_04 4:43

You have the energy again. Right. It's hard to be still. We just had grandparents' day last week.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Yes, I saw.

SPEAKER_04 4:50

And we had there's a grandparent there. He had two girls, and I have two girls. So I asked him, okay, what did you learn as being a dad of two girls? And he shifted his body so that he was like as directly straight in front of me, like square to me as he could. And he moved really close. So he's like a foot and a half from my face. He looks at me, stares me right in the eyes, and he says, Spend time with them. And I was and like it was so intense that I was like, okay, yes, sir. Yes, sir, I will. But that be still and to allow to have those moments in life with our kids, with our friendships, with the Lord first. What a lesson that you're learning. Um, you said something. You said that you like to document on Sunday nights. Like what is that?

SPEAKER_00 5:30

It's a time of just reflecting on the previous week, what God did, what I'm grateful for, what I need to carry over into the next week. So just taking that break to reflect and then to chart a course of action for the next week.

SPEAKER_04 5:48

I love that.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Brilliant. That's great. We'll have to talk about that. I'm a bullet journal or I love my bullet journal.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

We'll have to convey, I'd love to know what you have in your bullet journal. Yes. We'll we'll chat. Yes, Monty, bullet journal. Next episode.

SPEAKER_04 6:02

Next episode. How to bullet journal.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

That's right. Um, so what you've been here quite some time now. 20 years. That's amazing. I know. It's amazing. Wow. So longer than some of our students have been alive, but um it's truth point. Um what brought you to Northwestern and into media specifically?

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Well, before this, I was a theater director at Mini Haha, a local high school. And someone on staff had seen some of the shows that I had been producing over there. And he was going to start a story structure class, but his job here at Northwestern changed. So he brought my name to the department chair and said, we need to bring her. I just finished my MFA. I had returned to Minihau to start a film program. And he just said, let's bring this director to campus to start our first story structure class. So I did that after rehearsals one night a week. And that's what introduced me. And then the next year, I there was a full-time, an additional job or a new job for starting the a film program. And I moved into that role.

SPEAKER_04 7:16

So you get to help pioneer the pro the film program that is currently here?

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Yes. Yep. At this, at before that, there was a television program and then the radio program, of course. So the film program was new at that time. So cool.

SPEAKER_04 7:30

Very cool. Yes and that's a good segue into learning more about this department. So film obviously is still a big part of this. What else belongs, like what makes up the department of media arts here at Northwestern?

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Well, first, so media production, which is film and radio. Then we have communication studies. We are now working with arts and design, graphic design and animation. So those are the different majors that comprise this department.

SPEAKER_04 7:58

Well, it doesn't sound like you guys have any fun at all with a bunch of creatives.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

We really we love each other. A lot of our work is external facing. I mean, on Friday night, there was an animation showcase in the Denler. It was packed with students and other faculty coming. So we have fun and we love supporting our students because this work is vulnerable and that it's work that is out in the world. So not only are we teaching them the skills of the creation and the process, but also how do you be an uh artist walking in the path that God has for you, knowing that it's not going to be perfect. Knowing that, I mean, one of our mantras here is pursue Christ and pursue craft and to fail magnificently. This is the place to do it. This is the place to take big risks and it's not failure. It's like just trying and learning and then trying again.

SPEAKER_04 8:58

To not have a fear of fail.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Right. Exactly. That's not that's not the that shouldn't be a deciding factor in what you do or try to do while you're growing and learning in this industry.

SPEAKER_04 9:12

It seems like a common thread that we had Jennifer um Jennifer Hunter in here for theater. And she talked about giving theater students the chance to fail too. Because this is a safe place for to do that and to learn from it. And you don't want to like stop being creative or chasing bold ideas because you're scared of failing, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Right. And an opportunity to see yourself do things that you hadn't done before, which builds confidence and builds learning as well.

SPEAKER_04 9:37

So cool. I remember I played football back in the day. Okay. My coach always told me if you don't know if you're blocking the right person, just block them hard. Right? Oh, I love that. Don't block if you're if you block the wrong person, don't do it like a little. Like hit somebody hard. Like so if you're gonna try an idea in media arts, like do it hard. Be wholehearted about it. Let's go. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

If you're not failing, you're probably not trying. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_04 10:05

Well, I love that. So and it it's not hard to guess a little bit of what the culture is like here in this department with a bunch of creativity and this opportunity to fail magnificently and pursue Christ, pursue craft. Like it can we can already tell. Very you're very mission-driven, intentional in what you do with your students. Let's focus that into the film specifically and with this film festival that has happened for now 20 years. So let's dive into the 516.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Yeah, so you just had the 20th film festival, which is amazing. How did the celebration go?

SPEAKER_00 10:42

The 516 Film Festival this year, on the 20th anniversary, was just speckled with alumni coming back to return to the festival. Our students, our current students who oftentimes don't have a perspective of the history in which they're living here at Northwestern, had that perspective of being at the 20th and hearing stories about where it began and how it's how it's developed was meaningful to them. Kind of this like, wow. And then just for them to think, okay, in 10 years, what will it be? So it was the same in that our students are doing this, they're telling the stories that they feel called to tell. They're working hard, they're wholehearted with each other. And then it was also different having some of our alums come back and give they presented awards. So our alumni came back and presented awards at the festival. And there was a little bio over each of the or before each of those alumni took the stage, and you could hear the reaction of the audience, like, what? Oh, this is from the NBC lot? Like our our alumna are all over the place. And it gave me such an excitement and an awareness of how God is pulling our students from Northwestern out into the world and doing his work through them. And that's awesome. That is truly awesome.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

It was so cool to see where alums are now. I had no idea. Like you said, yeah. So it was awesome. They were, like you said, sharing videos from their jobs from California and Hollywood. That was so cool. So if you you can actually see the festival online on the film festival site. So go check those movies out and the films out and where the alums are today. Um, you started the film festival 20 years ago. How did it, how did it begin?

SPEAKER_00 12:36

One of the first classes that I started was single camera production, where students learn how to direct a film from start to finish. And after that class, there wasn't a way for them to have their films be seen. So we started it. It started as a distribution for that class's films. So, I mean, it was very lo-fi. We checked out the carousel. Someone was like changing the films on a DVD player. We turned the lights on and the DVD player would switch. And uh, there were our students and then a bunch of administration because they were curious about what kind of films were coming out of Northwestern. And it was a humbling first film festival in because it's like they'd never made films for people beyond their families or their friends. And so they would watch their films on this larger screen, but they weren't getting the reaction that they thought they would. And it's like, but that's where we had to start. You don't make films and put them in a drawer. You have to you make films to share with an audience to see what's working, what's resonating. And then the next year things got better. And well, after that first festival, I went to the chair of the department and said, this is where we're starting. Come back next year.

SPEAKER_04 14:01

You have to start.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

You have to start. We started because they needed just our radio station had, or our radio program had a student radio station, our television program had their distribution. What where do the film students get to have that experience of putting their work out into the world? So that's where it started and how it started. So cool. So how did oh go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 14:22

No, I was gonna say, did students dress to the nines like they do now?

SPEAKER_00 14:27

No, probably sweatpants. It wasn't until the third year where someone showed up in a suit.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Or one person, you know, looked like they had got a really funky sports jacket at Goodwill. There were two people that dressed up, I think that third year. And then we started getting ideas while the films continued to increase in quality. People would say, Well, how about popcorn? You should have popcorn. Great idea. So then we got this popcorn machine, or let's have a clapper, let um, so that we can like point people, like there's an event in Totino or Night Hall tonight. And then one year, the students were like, We our goal this year is to have every single student dress up. So to start changing that message, we got a red convertible from a local car shop and drove it right in front of Night Hall and had all of the film students in their tuxes and their dresses after Chapel handout flyers about the film festival. Wow, cool. People came dressed up. It's like, okay, this is what it is.

SPEAKER_04 15:34

And that changed the feeling of this thing. For you listening, the 516 Film Festival now is a sold-out max capacity event in KPH. So 1400 people in there, and people are dressed to the nines with a red carpet. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

I was actually one of those students attending in the carousel in my sweatpants. You're kidding. I did not know that.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Do you remember any of the films? Sadly, I don't. I know.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

It's probably that I wish I did, but I I mean, I've it's blowing me away just how big and high quality it is now. And I love I love the engagement that the students have around it and alums. So so cool. So cool. Um obviously the selection process for these films has gotten a little more um strict as we've gone along. What does that process look like now?

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Well, instead of me choosing the films for the film festival, which is how it started, and really it was a everybody who had a film, we'd screen it because you needed that audience. But then we started having more and more films that we needed to have a selection process. And it couldn't be me because I knew the students too well and I was too close to the film. So we invite people from all around campus, faculty and staff, uh, some people on the cabinets, the president's cabinets, come one evening and we watch the films and then we talk about each one afterwards. They have a rubric, they give feedback and give points and then a conversation, and then we make a decision from there, which is very helpful. And also the the faculty and staff love that panel. I mean, it's on a Tuesday night at the end of a day, but they uh come, they're excited, they stay afterwards because they want to talk about the films. So we're so grateful for the community that has supported our student filmmakers and our student media makers as well. That's cool.

SPEAKER_02 17:33

Yeah, that's awesome. Um, so as you look back 20 years, I'm sure there's tons of moments and films that stick out to you. But um, is there a moment or film that kind of encapsulates what what the film festival is all about?

SPEAKER_00 17:50

There's a moment every film festival when I'm standing on stage and I'm just facilitating the awards program, I'm not saying anything, but I can see the students when their name is called. And what stands out for me is the student winner is obviously excited, but all the people sitting around that person, people that were also up for the same award are just as excited for them. And I love that part of our community that people are for each other. They're crewing on each other's films, they're staying up until three in the morning, you know, trying to support that director, trying to get the shots. It's like iron sharpening iron. Everybody is working hard and they want the best for everybody else. And you can see that when another name is called. You can see that excitement in them that their friends got the award. I love that. That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_04 18:48

That's powerful. So, why is it called the 516 Film Festival?

SPEAKER_00 18:53

It's not in May uh 16th.

SPEAKER_04 18:56

It's not 516, not May 16th.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

I know. It is based on Matthew 5.16, which was a verse that the university had claimed one year. So the students thought that should be the name of our film festival. Matthew 5.16, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good work and give glory to God in heaven. Amen. It's not us. It is not us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

Well, and like you said, films aren't made to be in a drawer. Right. The light's made to shine. So that's what it's about.

SPEAKER_04 19:28

Well, I think we've seen what has happened when those films have been lit out of their box here. Is it's got this event has gone from a carousel in sweatpants, right? Yeah. To the entire KPH auditorium dressed to the nines, and we see a big attraction and a draw to this event, which speaks to a chance to really shine a light. And that's true in the film industry, right? In the media arts industry, is that it is very external and you have a chance to communicate to growing audiences, how does that reach all the way back to what you're trying to do in your department to the core?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Well, I think for me today, in having this discussion, I'm just called back to the reality that the film festival grew because of God's blessing. Like we followed the path that when people would give ideas to the festival, it's like, yes, yes. But those were small daily, those were small decisions. And then God blessed this event abundantly beyond what we could have planned. I mean, when we started this in the carousel, I did not imagine what it could be, but I could imagine what the next step was. And to keep saying yes to those next steps is what we as a department need to keep doing. Saying yes to growing so that the reach can go beyond this department, just like the film festival goes goes beyond just that workshop or this area, but it reaches that audience, whether it's in person or online. So those steps, that's what I for our department. Saying yes to the steps and then just watching to see what God can do with those efforts.

SPEAKER_04 21:17

Watch what he does when we faithfully say yes to the next step. And uh we'll be praying for you, Ann, and your team. Thank you. Um, as we look ahead, I'm sure there are exciting plans for the department, and maybe we can hear about them for another time. Um but thanks for giving us more of the story and the impact of the 516. And uh thanks for what you do here at Northwestern, the way you inspire students, and thanks for your team members as well. And and again, thank you for taking a few minutes out of your your day at the end of the semester to join us here on the Unwavering Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Thank you, and thank you both for what you're doing, getting the messages within Northwestern out into our community, our alums and larger community. You guys are wonderful. You're awesome. Thank you. It's an honor to do it.

SPEAKER_04 21:56

It is. And for you listening to this episode, may you Let your light shine today as you're out in your work, in your homes, with your communities, with your friends. May you let your light shine that they might see what God is doing in you. May you let people experience his goodness through you. So say yes to what he calls you today. And we'll be back here soon with another episode. But Anne, thanks again, and uh we'll see you soon.

SPEAKER_03 22:19

Holding on to your promises. Holding on to your promises.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Thank you for listening. To hear more, subscribe and leave a rating wherever you listen. And if you know an alum, faculty member, staff, or student of Northwestern doing amazing things out in the world, let us know at alumni at unwsp.edu. The unwavering podcast, highlighting the people, the purpose, and the pulse of Northwestern.

SPEAKER_03 22:47

Your love is unwavering.