Carnival ah! was a three-day arts and humanities festival at Austin Community College celebrating student achievement and cultural origins. The festival featured a film festival screening short films by ACC students, including "2 1/2 Hours that Changed Bastrop" about the 2011 Texas wildfires. The festival highlighted foreign languages and English as a Second Language programs through activities exploring cultural roots from around the world. It also included performances, a reading by author Nick Flynn, and was an opportunity for students, faculty and the community to celebrate and enjoy the liberal arts.

1. Carnival ah! affirms fun
Three-day arts and humanities festival applauds artistic students
achievements, focuses on cultural origins
Published in The Accent - April 2012
Carnival ah! kicked off its celebration of creativity and cultural heritage April 10-12 and the Austin
Community College Rio Grande Campus with a film festival titled “Where We Are Coming From -
Visions of Identity and Community.”
Austin Community College students Marco Gutierrez, David Saenz, William Alonso and Kenneth
Reeves debuted their short film “2 ½ Hours that Changed Bastrop” Wednesday, April 11 at Carnival
ah!.
Saenz said the film is still a work in progress which he hopes to make into a full documentary to be
presented at the 2013 South by Southwest Film Festival.
The film chronicles the people of Bastrop, Texas and their experiences with the wildfires of September
2011, and was created as a historical archive.
“Ultimately it is a story about hope and rebuilding, and how the central Texas community has come
together to help each other,” Saenz the film’s director of photography, said.
Associate Director of Center for Public Policy and Political Studies (CPPPS) Carla Jackson served as the
film festival coordinator and said in a press release that the film festival portion was a great way to
start the celebration.
“This year’s Carnival ah! events examine our culture heritage and these films reflect on who we are,
not individually and collectively,” she said.
Drawing inspiration from ACC’s “Start Here. Get There” motto, the Carnival ah! theme this year was
“How Did You Get Here?” The festival highlighted the foreign language and English for Speakers of
Other Languages Program. It featured several ways to discover the cultural roots of other countries,
such as an interactive video map which featured interviews with students and faculty from many
different countries.
Festival-goers were greeted with a variety of other activites including the Migration Map project
which offered an opportunity to trace family migration paths. For the bookworms in attendance, a
portion of the carnival called “Night Stories” showcased a reading by Nick Flynn, an award-winning
author whose first book is now a film entitled “Being Flynn.”

2. Other highlights included a performance from Austin’s own Billy Eli Band, as well as performance by
ACC’s Jazz Band.
“The general idea for Carnival ah! is to enjoy and celebrate the contributions that the liberal arts and
humanities make at ACC, and in the lives of our students and faculty,” Lyman Grant, Dean of Austin
Community College’s Arts and Humanities Department, said.
Grant said the current theme was selected because of ACC’s commitment to meeting students where
they are as they enter the college and because students come from so many different places with a
variety of experiences.
Carnival ah! is in its fourth year and is a collaboration of the Arts and Humanities Department and
ACC’s CPPPS.
ACC philosophy professor Brandon Watson said he is always interested to see what the carnival
participants come up with.
“One of my favorite things about it is that you really get to see the cross pollination of disciplines,”
Watson said. “You get to see a lot more interaction between the disciplines that you wouldn’t
normally see in a classroom setting.”
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