/  Visual Identity
Elia Kazan Film Festival
Is it possible to create a film festival of a classic Hollywood director for today’s audience?

Objective

To choose a filmmaker and design a film festival based on a common theme in the selected films. The film festival consists of many different design materials: a poster, catalogue, DVD packaging, tickets and a soundtrack. The design concept is based on a common theme from the films picked for the festival.

I chose Elia Kazan after having considered a lot of directors. He was an influential classic Hollywood filmmaker from more than a half a century ago. It’s interesting and challenging to bring the vintage style from that era to a contemporary film festival.

Solution

After researching and watching Elia Kazan’s numerous films, I chose five of them as the feature films in the festival: A Tree Grows in BrooklynThe Sea of GrassPinkyA Streetcar Named Desire and Splendor in the Grass. The common theme among all these five is women’s independence. The women in his films choose to make sacrifices to live their own lives.

To present this concept visually, I photographed a model wearing 19th century fashion, depicting her readiness to leave her home for her life in society. I also use watercolor as a strong texture to present the harsh social issues those women faced and how it made them lose something in their lives.