On March 1, filmmakers and artists from the Seattle arts community gathered together to showcase their works at the Silver Screen Seattle’s “A Night of Cinema” held at UW. The event was jointly hosted by UW LUX Film Production Club and Tambia Productions, a Seattle-based multimedia artist collective partially comprised of current and former UW students.
The Silver Screen event aimed to connect members across different media communities and highlight the range in scale of projects between the various Seattle art groups. Throughout the evening, artists displayed their films, visual works, and music videos, followed by Q&A sessions about their inspiration and production processes.
Among the works featured were UW student films directed by Kian Schmeer and Megan Joyce Jamora, and works of Tambia Productions by Dawit Borrows and Remi Vernon, as well as films from the broader Seattle community by Nash Pearson and Abdul Kassamali.
Borrows, executive director of Tambia Productions and a UW alum, emphasized the sense of community and connection he wanted to achieve through the LUX and Tambia Productions collaboration.
“UW kind of has a huge bubble, so we’re trying to expose the students to what’s going on in the community,” Borrows said. “The University of Washington has a lot of resources, and students are making work. The community also has a lot of production, but it needs more resources. So we’re trying to bridge that gap.”
As UW’s primary student film production club, LUX provides one of the only ways for students to become involved in the world of filmmaking. According to Jamora, LUX co-president, the collaboration with Tambia Productions was exciting as it provided students the unique opportunity to explore different film communities outside of UW.
“Something that I’ve noticed is that a lot of people in LUX tend to really collaborate within the club, but I don’t really know of many other filmmakers in Seattle,” Jamora said. “I’m really glad [Borrows] reached out to us because it was a great way for us to be able to reach across different networks.”
In addition to forging community connections, Borrows shared that another motivation for the event was to create an environment for people to experience art and connect with each other in person. Alongside the rising prominence of digital sharing platforms, Silver Screen provided artists the opportunity to showcase their works in a physical, in-person space.
“These days, the way we express art is very personalized, but even though it’s convenient, it’s lost this group connection,” Borrows said. “And now you prepare a video for, let’s say, a month, and then it ends up as a link in your bio. So that’s something we’re trying to address.”
Through the collaborative efforts of LUX and Tambia Productions in their Silver Screen event, the groups marked a celebratory milestone for the Seattle film industry and certainly helped to make a big city feel just a little bit smaller.
Reach contributing writer Addie Picker at arts@dailyuw.com. X: @addiepickeruw
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