FSU Professor Competes in Queen City Film Festival With Documentary Film

Sep 27, 2018 2:20 PM

A film produced and directed by a Frostburg State University Communications faculty member with the assistance of more than 30 FSU students over three years will be one of the competitors at the Queen City Film Festival.

Annie Danzi, an assistant professor at Frostburg State University, will compete with her documentary film, “Life’s A Stage: The Gwen Lehman Story.”

Producing and directing the documentary, Danzi supervised an all-student crew through three years of production as an experiential learning project. More than 30 Frostburg State Mass Communication students gained real-world experience in roles such as camera operator, associate producers and editors.

The film focuses on the extraordinary career of high school educator, Gwen Lehman, who devoted 47 years to teaching the performing arts at Stephen Decatur High School in rural Berlin, Md. Danzi, herself part of Lehman’s legacy, was a student at Stephen Decatur High School.

“This film shines a light on a remarkable, magnetic educator and the issues that the arts face in the American public-school system,” Danzi said. “Working with FSU students on a film about education seemed like a perfect fit to me, and we all learned so much throughout the process.”

“Life’s A Stage: The Gwen Lehman Story” is playing at the Queen City Film Festival at The Venue at Mezzos on Centre Street in Cumberland on Friday, Oct. 5, at 2 p.m. See the Allegany Allied Arts, Inc web site for more information about the festival, which runs from Oct. 4 to 7, or the lifesastagedocumentary Facebook page for more information about the film.

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