Max's Digital Dysphoria

PANEL #1 | THURSDAY 11:45AM | LIBRARY

“Cinema is dead!” Or, is it rather, “not quite dead yet”?

Following a screening of Maxwell's Movie Night, filmmaker Alexis Duran, Professor Peter Maxwell, and BSFI member Leslie Bosson, grapple with the vital role of cinema in society.

Can towns like Borrego Springs still use movies to help bond community? Is it a lost cause? Should cinema even matter in a digital dysphoria?

From online classrooms and streaming to film festivals and theaters, the conversation explores what movies mean today and how we can seek connection through them, whether experiencing a film alone or sharing it with an audience.

The panel will invite audience members to talk about the new ways we watch, engage with, and find meaning through cinema. We’ll all discuss how the relationship with movies continues to change as both the medium and ourselves evolve.

PANELISTS:

Alexis Duran is a Southern California–based filmmaker, educator, and award-winning storyteller working across explainers, video journalism, short-documentaries, and feature-length documentaries.

Alexis has a strong foundation in television news broadcasting, having worked as a studio camera operator at NBC San Diego 7, an experience that informed his interest in reporting on impactful stories and supported his transition into freelance filmmaking. He has directed and shot documentaries and episodic nonfiction content for a wide range of international and national outlets.

Peter Maxwell's most recent project, “Letters Home,” is a documentary that recognizes the years his grandfather, Willie Jordan, served in the U.S. Army while in France during World War I.  "Letters Home" has been screened and honored at a dozen film festivals nationally and internationally.

Since 2010, Peter Maxwell has taught film history and media studies at Southwestern College in Chula Vista, CA.

Leslie Bosson grew up in a rural town in Vermont moving to Los Angeles nearly 30 years ago. Her first job in television and film was working in a prop house in downtown Hollywood.

Over the course of 25 years she worked for Pearson Entertainment, NBC Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, and HBO as a production accountant and show auditor. In 2021, she and her husband moved permanently to Borrego Springs where they maintain a passion for the motion picture arts through film.

She’s the VP of the Borrego Springs Film Institute and curator for the BSFI’s year-round movie screening series.