Beyond the Cinema Screen: Alumni, Students Celebrate Professor’s Lasting Impact

The program, Birth, Earth, Screen, Sky, marked the completion of MacDonald’s “Avant-Doc Trilogy,” bringing together films and ideas spanning decades of his scholarship, including Avant-Doc: Intersections of Documentary and Avant-Garde Cinema (2014), The Sublimity of Document: Cinema as Diorama (2019), and Comprehending Cinema (2024), all published by Oxford University Press. The hosting venue, Anthology Film Archives, is known as an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema.       

The series was programmed by MacDonald alongside three of his former students — Annie Berman ’18, Ava Witonsky ’21, and Isha Parkhi ’21 — all of whom now work in film. Their return to help shape the event illustrated the kind of lasting creative and professional connections MacDonald has fostered over decades of teaching. 

“Scott’s pedagogy has shaped not only his students’ careers but also that of working filmmakers,” Parkhi said, noting that several artists in attendance first gained wider recognition through his writing and scholarship.

For current students, the experience offered a rare opportunity to see those connections in action. Addy Grace ’26, who was invited to attend with Mekhia Foster ’26 and Professor Zhuoyi Wang, is one of MacDonald’s thesis advisees. Her interest in cinema took shape in his classroom.

“I thought I was going to major in literature or English or history,” she said. “I’d always been interested in film, but I hadn’t really thought about it seriously. It was something that was only in the back of my mind [that] became very much at the forefront of what I do.”

Grace decided to major in Cinema and Media Studies, took part in Semester Cinema, and got involved with F.I.L.M., a series overseen by MacDonald that features visiting filmmakers, silent films accompanied by live music, and other film-focused events.

Seeing alumni co-curate films they first encountered as students deepened Grace’s understanding of and appreciation for MacDonald’s approach.

“Scott sometimes shows things that are kind of shocking or unconventional, but he doesn't show them for no reason,” she said. “They stay with people, and they make an impression.”

Grace also witnessed how eager alumni are to stay involved with MacDonald and cinema, illustrating how and what he teaches shapes what students carry forward into their work and creative lives, even years later.

“It was really great to see them come back together,” she said of the alumni who helped bring the event to life. “It was lovely talking not only with alumni about their experience with Scott, but to also hear what they are doing now and how they took what they learned into a post-grad world.”

Those conversations offered Grace a clearer sense of the possibilities that could come after Hamilton and how many different paths she could choose to take. And in at least one version of that future, the influence of her thesis advisor and faculty mentor is easy to recognize.

“In an ideal world, I would love to go to grad school, become a professor, and teach film history, all while also creating things on the side,” Grace said.