Grassroots Filmmaking

New faculty member Cara Deleon recognized by National Museum of Women in the Arts

Cara Deleon, Communication Design, was recognized at the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ Festival of Women’s Films and Media Arts in Washington, D.C., during the final week of September.
The museum is the only museum in the world dedicated exclusively to recognizing the contributions of women artists. The six-day event exhibited the best of contemporary moving images created by women who are “exploiting the medium in provocative ways.”
Deleon’s film Convulse was chosen for the program of approximately 100 films from more than 700 submissions. Convulse is a short experimental piece that mixes found and original 16 mm footage to “explore the futility of perfection.” Although this was the D.C. premiere of the film, Convulse has been exhibited throughout the country, winning several awards for outstanding experimental film.
Convulse is 3.5 minutes long and took four months for Deleon to create from start to finish. “I did it while I was at Savannah College of Art and Design in film production. Convulse centers on the circle and the idea of drawing the perfect circle; someone draws a circle, someone drawing over and over, figures moving in a circular motion, very anonymous. Very abstract—experimental, not narrative,” said Deleon.
Deleon grew up in Iowa City, and received her BA from Macalester College in Minnesota in Russian studies and history. After a short stint in Washington, D.C., as an intern in the State Department, she decided to return to something she had loved since childhood—film. She attended the University of Iowa and received her MA in film studies and then went to Savannah College of Art and Design for an MFA in film production.
Deleon also works with digital film. She is working on a documentary that will use both 16 mm and 8 mm film stock and digital technology. The documentary is about the destruction of the farm community in America, an idea that connects to her heritage—her mother’s family farmed in Iowa for generations. One aspect of the destruction of small communities that Deleon explores is the very creative ways some communities have adapted. “Small towns resort to strange things to survive,” said Deleon. “In Villisca, Iowa, the town has created a tourist industry from being the site of the oldest unsolved murder of an entire family in southwestern Iowa. There are videos; you can buy a T-shirt or spend the night in the house!”
The subject for this new film comes from Deleon’s advocacy of grassroots filmmaking. “While I love classic Hollywood films, I believe that film can be used as a tool to give people a voice, to enable them to tell their stories and express themselves,” said Deleon. “As a filmmaker, it is not my goal to entertain, but to make people think. “

—Kathleen McPartland, Public Affairs and Publications