Next week two Drexel students will be traveling to San Jose, California to bring their film, Exit 117 (quickly picking up steam on the film festival circuit) to the Cinequest Film Festival. The Cinequest Film Festival is one of the largest in the country and will this year be celebrating its 20th anniversary. Films such as Thank You For Smoking and Blue Car have premiered there.
Drexel’s own Christina Papi produced Exit 117, which was made on a budget of less than $900. Despite its budgetary limitations and the fact that all the actors were unprofessional friends and relatives Exit 117 has gained enough acclaim to be premiering on the sought after Friday night, February 26, in a main theater at Cinequest with a follow up screening on Sunday the 28th. Papi will join writer/director Kevin McMullin, and various cast members in an attempt to get their movie into the hands of Sean Penn who will be there accepting an award.
Kevin McMullin “attended the University of Pennsylvania, consolidating his course load into three years so that he could fund his debut feature film with the remaining tuition money. However, upon graduation in May 2009, he was able to reduce the final production cost to only $850 by borrowing equipment, hiring non-actor friends, and editing the entire feature on his laptop” (www.exit117movie.com).
The official website describes the film as “a melodic group portrait of New Jersey youth and the kaleidoscope of dreams, fears, and laughs that is their last summer together. Told in a series of interconnected vignettes, characters confront adulthood in a sequence of confessions, declarations, and resolutions.”
Exit 117 has also been accepted to the Atlanta Film Festival as well as the Garden State Film Festival, and has been compared to Richard Linklater’s Slacker and Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me. The screenplay won the 2009 Flesch Screenwriting Award. View the trailer and other videos here, or visit the official website for more information.
http://exit117movie.com/Site/Home.html
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