Last weekend, The Riverbend Film Festival made its return to the historic Goshen Theater. This marked the 22nd year that the festival took place. Additionally, this was the second year that Goshen College student projects were shown, with an evening dedicated to eight short films created by students from GC and the surrounding area.     The Riverbend Film Festival is unique to Goshen, but its reach is much broader, gathering directors, producers and enthusiasts from around the country. David Kendall, director of career networks and member of the festival board, recognized what a “rare thing” it is to have such a...

By Alina Bergstresser • September 4, 2025 • Arts

On Tuesday evening, students, staff, community members and faculty gathered in Umble Center for a conversation between President Rebecca Stoltzfus and filmmaker Martin Doblmeier about his career.  Doblmeier is a filmmaker known for his documentaries focusing on religious subjects and significant historical figures. Throughout the night, he answered several questions concerning not only his professional journey but also his faith and values.  He began by discussing the importance of fostering deeper understanding between different faith communities. “I was born, raised, educated Roman Catholic … And then I began this work … and I began to find myself in so many...

By Igor Sapucaia • April 17, 2025 • News

Silas Immanuel can write a script, set up lighting, shoot a scene, edit the sound, layer in captions, produce a documentary and fill an auditorium. He can also keep the balance sheet, tracking income, expenses and, hopefully, rising assets. Immanuel is a 23-year-old senior film production and accounting double major from New Delhi, India. He works at ITS Media and FiveCore Media and helps lead the International Student Club. Immanuel has  worked on various video productions over the past few years, most notably his award-winning documentary “Goshen: A Sundown Town’s Transformation,” which won first place for Best Documentary from Collegiate...

By Gavin Johnson • November 14, 2024 • Features

On April 27 in the Umble Center, there will be a presentation of two senior capstone films, both written, directed and produced by senior film production and writing major Court Templeton.  The first of the two is titled “Semangat: Into the Unknown,” following the stories of the Indonesia Study Service Term (SST) group that traveled to Philadelphia before traveling abroad in the spring semester of 2022. It is the capstone project for her SST trip.  The second is titled “Sanctuary,” and is a horror film that follows the story of a girl that has been taking shelter in her home...

By Sarah Miller • April 13, 2023 • Arts

Today, the small island in the middle of the Goshen Dam Pond may not look like much ‒ three and a half acres of trees, bushes and birds’ nests ‒ but in the early 1900s, it was a bustling hub of activity, home to a skating rink, theater and shooting gallery. The history of this island, known as Blosser’s Island, is the subject of two Goshen College film students’ new mini-documentary: “Blosser’s Park: The Social Gathering Place of Goshen.”  Courtney Templeton, a junior film production major, and Jackson Steinmetz, a junior film production and communication major, began working on the...

By Augusta Nafziger • October 28, 2021 • Features

“I wanted to make something that truly reflects the wonders of SST.” And after spending three months abroad, third-year film production major, Eric Miller, did just that after being inspired to create a two-part documentary conveying his memorable trip to Ecuador. “I remember before embarking on this journey, I knew next to nothing about what you actually do on SST,” Miller said. “There were some videos, but it’s mostly just people talking about it, rather than showing it.”  Titled ‘El Refugio de Ecuador’, Miller’s first documentary captures the chaos that ensued as the coronavirus swept across the globe.  The third...

By Record • January 21, 2021 • Features

For the third year in a row, Goshen College’s FiveCore Media has delayed the release of its documentary film, “Vital Passage.”  While the first delays were due to production complications, COVID-19 has halted filming this year. “We are anxiously hoping that we can premiere [“Vital Passage”] in the new version of the theater,” said Kyle Hufford, associate professor of communication and general manager of FiveCore Media. “Our plans got put on hold a little bit to premiere it there…now that everything’s been delayed.”  “Vital Passage,” which began as a Maple Scholars research project in 2017, is devoted to learning more...

By Anna Smucker • October 15, 2020 • Arts

We are living in a golden age of the superhero genre. We’re averaging four films a year and they all strive to be artistically distinct from each other while being profitable for their respective studios. Whatever your personal thoughts on the superhero genre are, it is important to note that with this degree of success, there is a lot of potential. Because superhero films are almost always guaranteed to make their money back, studios are willing to take risks that they might not be prepared to with other blockbusters. In fact, the popularity of superhero films has directly allowed the...

By C.C. Lilford • November 1, 2019 • Arts

Yes, my dear readers, the time has come to bid farewell to the summer movie season: that most wonderful time of the year when Hollywood releases its biggest films in the hopes of making some of the highest profits of the year. The biggest story of the summer was the success of “Avengers: Endgame” from Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Pictures. The three-hour epic made a staggering $2,796,139,816 worldwide, unseating James Cameron’s 2009 film “Avatar” as the highest-grossing movie of all time. This kind of hit was not an anomaly for Walt Disney Pictures, either. “The Lion King,” “Toy Story...

By C.C. Lilford • September 12, 2019 • Arts

Although it is only their third year at Goshen College, C.C. Lilford, a double-major in creative writing and film production, is in the midst of writing an original sci-fi fantasy series. The series is titled “Temples to Alien Gods,” and it follows a crew of individuals in space on a quest to find the home planet of ancient aliens that are believed to have created all sentient life in the universe.   When finished, this piece will serve as Lilford’s senior project, one that they hope will be formally published in one form or another.   Currently, “Temples to Alien...

By Eric Miller • January 26, 2019 • Features

Maple City Market Food Co-op worked with Goshen College to show internationally-acclaimed filmmaker Steve Alves’ documentary “Food for Change” on Oct. 30 in Newcomer Center. Food co-ops across more than 50 cities in the United States are presenting screenings of the film on college campuses and Public Broadcasting Service shows for the month of October. October is National Co-op Month which became nationally recognized in 1964 by Orville Freeman, former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. All students, Maple City Market co-op members and the general community were invited and encouraged to attend the free screening. The film follows the food cooperative...

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The River Bend Film Festival will soon be returning to Goshen. This year’s theme: Making a Splash. About three years ago, the festival moved from South Bend to Goshen. The festival works with the city of Goshen as well as other groups and individuals, like David Kendall, associate professor of communication, and his wife, Carrie Lee Bland-Kendall. The two run Kendall Pictures and have several film industry relationships, making them a key connection between the college, the city, and the festival. “When the film festival moved here, they really wanted to partner with Goshen entities,” said Bland-Kendall. “We’re the people...

By Elsa Lantz • April 12, 2018 • Features

In August 2017, Tabitha Immanuel, a Goshen College senior from New Delhi, India, found herself in a place she never expected to be — at a dinner table with a Hutterite family near Freeman, South Dakota. She was there with two other students and a professor with GC’s video production company, FiveCore Media, recording the Hutterite dialect for a 75-minute documentary titled “Three Groups, One Story.” When the Hutterite family learned the film crew had not eaten yet, they invited them in for a meal. “I had never been to South Dakota before. I didn’t know what to expect,” Immanuel...

By Elsa Lantz • March 29, 2018 • Features

On the evening of November 21, the lights of Umble dimmed to present the culmination of four years of work in Goshen’s film department. As the capstone project for his major, Tim Litwiller invited the public to attend his senior film show. A double major in communications and film production, Litwiller’s project has been a long time coming. He first seriously started planning while on SST in Peru the fall of 2016, where he developed an original plan to create new short films and typography animation videos. However, due to time constraints and struggles in writing a short film script,...

By Record • November 30, 2017 • Arts

David Kendall, associate professor of communication, has quickly become an integral member of Goshen’s visual and media arts scene. As he finishes up his second year as a professor, he reflects on his experiences with film as a teacher and as a vital cog to the Riverbend Film Festival, which occurred last weekend, April 6-8. “I’ve taught for about 17 years — seems crazy to me — but I started teaching art at Chandler and Parkside Schools in 2000,” Kendall said. While at the Goshen city elementary schools, Kendall taught visual arts but began working with film, television and acting...

By Marris Opsahl • April 13, 2017 • Features