Alumni News
Feature Presentation
Kenyon News
A film and Spanish literature double major, Miguel Alvarez-Flatow ’14 is turning his senior honors thesis into a feature film.
Miguel Alvarez-Flatow
Film and Spanish Literature '14
For many people, their senior thesis gets packed away after graduation, never to be looked at again. For others, it becomes a launching pad for their life’s work. Miguel Alvarez-Flatow ’14 is in the process of turning the screenplay he wrote for his senior honors project into a feature-length film.
Alvarez-Flatow, who was a double major in film and Spanish literature, has secured most of the funding for the film and hopes to have it ready to hit the film festival circuit in February 2015.
A native of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico, Alvarez-Flatow describes his film, called The Bonfire, as a “contained thriller,” about a group of Americans who go to Latin America for a shamanistic experience. He was able to secure $40,000 from Mexico for his film - a significant part of the relatively low $300,000 total funding he needs (the rest of the money has come from private financers). “It’s very low budget for a film, but you have to make your first film.”
Despite taking place in the Mexican jungle, Alvarez-Flatow says there’s plenty of behind-the-scenes Kenyon influence in the movie. “The film department helped so much,” he said about writing the screenplay. “Individual studies with faculty members kind of helped solidify the idea I had in my mind.”