Fans of Notre Dame’s annual Student Film Festival can now relive those cherished and sometimes bizarre memories at home.
Recently released on video, The Loft Tapes is a 110-minute compilation of the best student-made films created in undergraduate film courses at Notre Dame between 1993 and 1997. Two-person student teams wrote and directed each film in approximately eight weeks for about $900.
Among the 15 films included on the cassette are: 1997’s “Eat Mate Die,” which forecasts a doomed future for a humanity trying to become omnipotent through technology; 1995’s “Lungwamen,” about how casinos have changed Native American life; and 1997’s “Full Frontal,” which presents a nude male model, his thoughts being voiced by a female narrator.
What the films have in common, according to faculty advisor Jill Godmilow, who selected them, is “an emphasis on experimentation” and “astonishing originality.”
Released by Facets Video, the tape is available for $29.95 plus shipping from the Hammes Notre Dame Bookstore and Facets Video (www.facets.org), as well as at South Bend-area video stores.