The 2026 Geneseo Insomnia Film Festival
Photo courtesy of staff writer Christian Chaffee
The 12th annual Geneseo Insomnia Film Festival (GIFF) was held this past GREAT Day on Apr. 22 to enthusiastic and rambunctious applause in Wadsworth Auditorium.
According to Dr. Sarah Brookes—GIFF’s primary organizer—while speaking at the event, the film festival began in 2012, and was the “brainchild” of Joseph Dolce, who used to work at SUNY Geneseo Computing and Information Technology (CIT). Dolce left the college in 2024, according to a post on LinkedIn, and, according to Dr. Brookes, many at the time believed the film festival “would die out after he was gone.”
Yet, as Dr. Brookes explained, Dr. Andrew Herman and herself decided to “keep it going,” maintaining much of what Dolce envisioned for the film festival while updating other elements.
According to the GIFF webpage, teams of up to four students have “just 24 hours to write, film, edit, and post a 3-minute video” which, according to Dr. Brookes, must utilize three elements from a list of 20 to win prizes. As said by Dr. Brookes at the event, these prizes included gift cards and t-shirts from local businesses as well as candy and snacks.
After the films are submitted to the GIFF staff, a panel of judges composed of faculty and staff from SUNY Geneseo judge each film based on its impact, cinematography, story, and gestalt, as explained by the GIFF Webpage.
The Lamron spoke with Jake Mylan, a finance and accounting double major, who—alongside Andy Krolczyk, an accounting major and finance minor, Cy Greenblatt, a communication major and marketing minor, and Danny Maurer, a communication major—produced this year’s third place film, The Barn. As Mylan explained when asked why he and his team participated, “It looked like an opportunity to have some fun and display our cinematography skills.”
Inspired by the Netflix documentary True Haunting (2025), they “just went with the flow and tried to put pieces together to create our best possible film,” said Mylan. He explained, “our biggest challenge in producing our film was keeping it together and finishing the scene… [asa] lot of times our acting made each other laugh, which actually made the whole experience a better time.”
The Lamron also spoke with Annabella Bushnell, a communication major, who produced this year’s second place film Unwanted Message, alongside Michaela Lewis-Hardies, a double major in communication and English with a concentration in creative writing. As said by Bushnell, “[o]ur team wanted to participate in GIFF because we had never heard of the event before, and it seemed like an interesting challenge. The two of us are seniors so we figured since it would be our last opportunity to participate in something like this, it seemed fun and we should give it a try.”
The inspiration behind their film was “personal struggles that we have dealt with in our lives, regarding mental health and coping mechanisms,” as Bushnell explained, going on to say that the “message behind our film is displaying the reality of trauma responses, and different types of coping mechanisms that people may have.”
According to Bushnell, much of their time was spent “thinking about what our film could be about, and how we could tangibly go forward with our ideas over the course of a few hours,” with the process of filming and editing proceeding much faster afterwards.
The biggest challenge they faced was “finding ways to make the setting interesting,” with their film only having two settings—an apartment and the interior of a car. As Bushnell added, “[c]hanging lighting during the day to make a dark atmosphere was difficult, and thinking of different camera angles for such a limited space was challenging to work around.”
Additionally, The Lamron spoke with Courtney Duggan, a senior English adolescent education major on the creative writing track, who produced this year’s first place film, Red Robin (Yum), alongside junior math adolescent education major and geology minor Anna Hansen, sophomore early childhood/childhood education major Ally Montrois, and freshman English adolescent education major Tori Webster.
According to Duggan, since she was a freshman, Musical Theatre Club (MTC) has participated in GIFF, of which she is also a member. She follows a tradition of finding “one person from each year” from the club to participate in the film festival every year.
As Duggan explained, their team was inspired by one of this year’s elements “about characters wearing sun glasses indoors, and we felt like we could do something with that and have it be about guards or spies.” Their initial draft was four minutes and 30 seconds long, which included a “whole training montage… more dialogue and back story… and [s]o many hijinks jokes we had to cut out,” as Duggan said.
All three people The Lamron interviewed spoke very highly of GIFF, and they encouraged others to participate, with Bushnell wanting to “thank Dr. Brookes for making us aware of GIFF in the first place, and encouraging her students to participate. Neither of us were aware of the event at all until Dr. Brookes had informed our class. Her passion for the event really motivated us to challenge ourselves with the event, and it really paid off.”
Registration for next year’s GIFF begins Feb. 1, 2027, and filming begins Mar. 26 2027 at 5:00 p.m., according to the GIFF webpage.