By Aoi Ozone, Kazushige Hirasawa Scholarship Student, 2025-2026

The 2026 winter term is coming to an end. This week, we are preparing for the Mount David Summit on April 10.

The Mount David Summit is Bates’ annual campus-wide celebration of student academic achievement, and our class is scheduled to give a presentation about the Bates Film Festival. This presentation is an opportunity for us to promote our festival to a wider audience. At the same time, the process of discussing what we should convey in a one-hour presentation allows us to pause amid the busy rush and reflect on our mission.

In this blog, I would like to share one of our key goals: creating a space for dialogue that promotes mutual understanding. To achieve this, we have been careful to ensure that diverse voices are represented in the film festival. This is approached in two ways. First, we carefully curate the program featuring directors from varied backgrounds. And second, close attention is paid to whether certain opinions are intentionally excluded within each film.

We learned the importance of representing an inclusive group of filmmakers early in the semester. The film industry has historically lacked minority representation, and there are some efforts to support more diverse perspectives today. Through hands-on experience of actually selecting films for the Bates Film Festival, I see myself as part of this effort and I have come to understand the importance of the issue more deeply. In many of the films that we have watched since January, the filmmaker’s identity is embedded in the core issues of the work. The situations shown onscreen may seem extraordinary, but for the people involved, they are an ongoing everyday reality. In advocating for certain films, I felt it was important for voices that are not sufficiently represented in society to be offered a platform at our festival.

“We learned the importance of representing an inclusive group of filmmakers early in the semester. The film industry has historically lacked minority representation, and there are some efforts to support more diverse perspectives today. Through hands-on experience of actually selecting films for the Bates Film Festival, I see myself as part of this effort and I have come to understand the importance of the issue more deeply.”

At the same time, we have prioritized the equitable representation of different opinions in each film. What documentaries depict may appear neutral and objective at first glance, but certain voices or groups can sometimes be intentionally excluded. We have made a conscious effort to remain aware of the biases embedded in the filmmaking process.

In summary, we think the willingness to try to understand others is important and aim to create a space that fosters dialogue across differences. While it is easy to say “I don’t understand you,” “you’re wrong,” or “I disagree,” I hope our festival will help people to move beyond that, to respect (not necessarily agree with) different opinions. As we get ready to present at the Mount David Summit, I hope people will see that our embrace of diversity and community engagement strongly resonates with the mission of Bates College. The Bates Film Festival is free and open to the public, and we welcome a wide range of audiences including those who don’t usually watch films.