Northern Kentucky University has a wealthy supply of student-based organizations, clubs and groups tailored to all kinds of interests. Students can find Greek life, campus ministries – even a paintball club around campus. One club has recently been revived, and it could function as one of the first building blocks for film enthusiasts to achieve their ambitions.

Norse Media producer-director and electronic media and broadcasting lecturer Bavand Karim is rebooting the Norse Film Society and will be its adviser. Norse Film Society was originally created by senior electronic media broadcasting majors Stephanie Mathena and Austin Brown.
The initial goal was to give students who have a passion for film to meet and engage in discussion.

“The club had greatly progressed from watching and critically discussing and analyzing films to producing an award-winning film at The College Movie Festival,” Mathena said.

Group activity died down this semester with the exit of Brown and Mathena. When the founders became preoccupied with school work this fall, Norse Film Society productions stopped.

But it is back now. The group held its first meeting of the fall semester Oct. 13 in the Griffin Hall Digitorium. Karim, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, has a number of ideas, and notes on his office dry-erase wall demonstrate his enthusiasm and motivation to keep the group alive.
“Filmmaking is all about networking,” Karim said. “In order to make movies, you’ll need help from classmates.”

Karim emphasizes a hands-on approach. He seeks to combine aesthetics appreciation with production value and filmmaking’s inventive process.
“My hope is for this to be a pool of students to service filmmakers and filmmaking crew members,” Karim said.

Karim said he would like to make at least one film from the group’s 15-20 student-written scripts. He also wants students in other departments to join.
“I have interest in turning this into a class at some point, but interest must be generated first.”
Brown and Mathena achieved Karim’s current goals during their first two years.

“I’d like to see some initiative to keep members dedicated and enthusiastic about film projects and be able to have a reliable network to build off of after graduation to apply to real world settings,” Mathena said.

For more information, look NFS up on Facebook or email Karim karimb1@nku.edu.