While the focus at Winona Student University centers around the student’s success rate, Winona State has also decided to lend its focus toward instilling relevant themes throughout campus. Brynn Artley, a sophomore graphic design major, explained the current theme on campus involves the aspect of resilience and how her class is hosting a film festival.

“Our goal was to put together a line-up of films that we felt best represented this idea and would be impactful to our community,” Artley said.

The theme is set to last until the first week of November.

For the duration of theme’s presence within the campus community, members of the resilience panel will present several events for entertainment and knowledge purposes. Kyra Beske, a senior double majoring in creative digital media and film studies, commented on how this is not the university’s first time presenting a theme for faculty and staff members.

“This is the third year film students have done a film series on campus, curating a variety of free film showings for students and the public to come and enjoy,” Beske said. “Each year the film series is based on the campus theme for the year, this year’s theme being resilience.”

In addition to the theme of resilience, Winona State is raising awareness about the theme of “WISE” through a series of talks and events associated with the theme’s meaning.

The series begins on Oct. 2 at 7 p.m. in Stark Hall with a film screening of the documentary “Resilience: The Science of Stress and the Biology of Hope.”

Seth Lamey, a senior film studies major, is hosting the first night of the film series and gave a brief insight of what will happen the first night.

“I am going to introduce the series as a whole, setup the panel for after the film and give some word on the documentary itself. Afterwards, we have a panel of three people who will talk about the film and about child advocacy,” Lamey said.

The panel will include Ruth Charles, a social work professor and Kyann Brown, an occupational therapist at Winona Health.

While the theme may stand solely as an opportunity in impacting the perspectives of college students, the origins of the theme provide the reason for the theme’s arrival on campus.

“The Resilience film series is an event to bring students and our community together to enjoy films, ranging from educational documentaries to family friendly comedies,” Beske said. “Students who are involved with putting on this film series are currently enrolled in an upper level film class, FILM 490 Projects: Curating Films/Series, going towards completion of a film major or minor.”

The series will also be screening a range of films throughout the month of October such as, “Moonlight” on Oct. 9, “Eighth Grade” on Oct. 12, “Time for Ilhan” on Oct. 15, “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” on Oct. 16, “The Kid” on Oct. 21, “The Shape of Water” on Oct. 23, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” on Oct. 27. The series concludes on Oct. 30 with “A Quiet Place.”

The creation of the series does not only consist of films exhibiting the characteristics of the theme.

“Putting together the Resilience film series entails selecting the films, fundraising in order to purchase the rights to show the films, reaching out to potential speakers to accompany the films  and then preparing the actual presentations for each screening,” Artley said.

Artley also explained how each individual who attends the resilience film series will appreciate the content.

“We chose a very diverse set of thoughtful and entertaining films that tackle the issue of resilience in innovative ways–be that through documentary, horror, comedy or any genre in between,” Artley said. “We are confident there is something here for everyone.”