The last cultural relic of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design after it closes forever could be a student film still in post-production.
Final Cutz, described as a dark comedy zombie film, is a creative take on the school's painful closure, with a plot about a virus unleashed by a campus blaze that turns students into the undead.
The fire really did happen last May, and police suspect arson. Students and faculty say it might have been set by one or more disgruntled students.
Film school graduate David Church, who graduated in December, is a cast member in the film, most of which was shot last summer. He says Final Cutz is expected to be finished and released by July 1, but after this week, the cast and crew will no longer have access to the computers and editing software they've been using. They also won't be able to access The Screen art house for viewings.
“Once we get it all done, we’re hoping to get it into various festivals,” including the Cannes Film Festival in France, says Church. “We hope that when we do that, we’ll be able to travel and get the word out about what’s going on. By then the school will be closed, but we just want to show the last big hurrah of the film school.”
The campus has been handed over piecemeal to the city since January, with the Driscoll Fitness Center closing to the public in recent weeks and the Fogelson Library closing May 15. The transition follows the timeline announced last Spring by the school's outgoing corporate operator Laureate International, a billion-dollar for-profit education company.
Short-term tenants may use some campus spaces until the city figures out a more permanent solution for the midtown property. Santa Fe is still on the hook for over $20 million it borrowed from the New Mexico Finance Authority to purchase the land in 2009.
A screening of student films will also be taking place tonight at 7 pm, where Church says he'll show a stop-motion film he created using toy dinosaurs.
After tonight, Church says he'll stay in Santa Fe and look for a job to pay the bills while trying to pick up film gigs. It's the same precarious plan that other soon-to-be-alums also have.
At the final 1970's cinema class at The Screen on Thursday morning, Church and others chatted in the seats and aisles as lecturer and film school associate chair Liam Lockhart prepared to screen the 1974 head-trip Steppenwolf, adapted from the novel by Hermann Hesse and directed by Fred Haines.
Among the film students in attendance were Noelle Fredrickson and Ryan Schultz, both of whom graduate tomorrow with degrees specializing in post-production. They joke about the possibility of fast food restaurants replacing the dorm halls they live in.
"I'm excited to finally graduate, but overall I'm very anxious about the future," says Fredrickson, who hails from Galveston and works as a barista in town. "Other people who graduate from art schools can always graduate from their campuses and [go] back for resources [and] the faculty. … With us, we're getting booted out onto the street and told to fend for ourselves."
Shultz, who is from Houston, expresses a similar ambivalence.
“I’m happy we’re able to shoot [Final Cutz] and I think that one thing that stood out about this school [is that] the professors really care about the students,” Schultz says. “It’s a shame that Laureate did what they did—I didn’t even know the school was proposed to be sold.”
Even as the city has signaled The Screen's closure as all but imminent, Schultz says he won't fully believe it until it happens. Students say poor communication by the school's administration was a defining feature of campus life last year, up until the closure was announced.
"Even with what's happening on the eve of the school closing, I'm glad I spent four years here, because I've had some of the best experiences and made some of the best friends," Fredrickson says. "I'm glad the school was what it was, it's sad to see it shut down, but it is what it is, and there's nothing we can do about it now."
Lockhart quieted the room of ten or so audience members to begin his lecture. Steppenwolf became a popular book in 1960s counterculture, he explains, because it contemplated transcendence amid the drudgery of bourgeoisie life.
"You may ask why I didn't show this at the beginning of class," Lockhart says. "I'm not sure we were ready for it, necessarily."
The experiential nature of the film makes it "a little clunky, a little funky," he says, though that description probably won't turn off students who just spent four years experimenting with the medium.
The Screen has been known to attract eccentric and one-off characters, who will also find themselves shut out when the doors are locked Friday.
Before any students had arrived to the theater, Lockhart was setting up his podium for his morning lecture.
A person wearing a tie-dye T-shirt with a purple flannel long sleeve tied around the waist pops in to ask Lockhart if he knows anybody who would want to be in a film. Lockhart tells the person he is of no help.
"You don't make movies here anymore?" the passerby asks.
"No, we're closing for business. We're done," Lockhart says.
"That's sad," the stranger says. "Oh my God, that's not nice."
"Yes," Lockhart responds. "We're all gonna be out of work."
Student film screening: 7 pm Thursday May 10. Free. The Screen, SFUAD, 1600 St. Michael's Drive.
Spring semester graduation: 4 pm Friday May 11. Santa Fe Community Convention Center, 201 West Marcy.
