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Jalal Al-Marashi Jaffer '24

Another College Musical

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"Another College Musical" is a feature-length, musical film about college students auditioning for their theatre department’s next big show. The film has four original musical numbers, an original score, and a parody musical performance. With a cast and crew of over 100 people, combining resources from Triton Television and UC San Diego’s Departments of Visual Arts, Theatre, Music and the Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts, "Another College Musical" is a labor of love from and about student artists who make the most out of their time in school to pursue their dreams.

Q&A

Fellowship Cohort: Spring 2023


Why did you choose this project?
My co-director, Ryan Ritterby, and I are both big fans of musicals and wanted to create a musical of our own during our time at UC San Diego. We utilized all of our available resources to tell a story very close to home: that of artists who love musical theatre. We wanted to challenge ourselves to not only make a feature-length film, but to go the extra step and make it a musical, which adds a multitude of difficult, but truly rewarding layers to the filmmaking process.

How was this fellowship meaningful or impactful to you?
The Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts Fellowship provided us with the necessary funds to be able to feasibly create a film of such a large scale while in college. We were able to afford necessary resources for production and sent our film to a number of festivals to share our work with a larger audience.

The fellowship also gave us the comfort of knowing that we were supported by such a great network, truly allowing us to focus on the creative side of production and not stress about the financials. It has truly been an honor to serve as one of the first undergraduate fellows of the cinematic arts program at UC San Diego, and we are both excited to see the future of this program as it develops in years to come.

What future plans do you have related to this work, if any?
"Another College Musical" has been featured at the Austin Lift-Off Film Festival 2024 and Seattle Film Festival 2024. We are currently waiting to hear back from a few more film festivals to see if the film will play anywhere else. We might consider revisiting the world in a sort of sequel, reboot or related work in the future as both this medium and these characters were so much fun to work with and develop.

At the time he recevied his fellowship, Jalal Al-Marashi Jaffer was a Visual Arts major with an emphasis in media. He was a co-station manager of Triton Television with interest in exploring the Muslim American experience through storytelling and film.