The Daily Campus

Issue date: 4/13/09 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Ryan Sayers Audience members of film festival watch 'Blood City.'

Friday night, while most of UConn headed home for the weekend, a sizeable group of students came to view the student film competition held in the Student Union Theater. The first annual student film competition was held by the film club and SUBOG. The film club, which was formed last semester by film minors who were looking for an outlet to showcase their work and creativity, was approached by the SUBOG film committee about the idea of a student film showing.

Shana Morales, a 6th-semester american studies major, said that the film club "wanted to do something like the competition from the get go. We started with the intention of eventually doing something like this and when SUBOG approached us it gave us an opportunity."

The thought behind having a film competition was to give all creative UConn students a chance to exercise their creativity and to have their films judged. Many of the directors who showed their films were not film club members.

Joshua Leibowitz, a 4th-semester material science and engineering major, is not a part of the film club, but saw the competition as a way to get involved with the on-campus film community.

"I make movies as a hobby and I wanted to see what other students were doing with their films. I think this is great and I would do it again," Leibowitz said.

Many of the directors also took advantage of the expansive campus, using it as a backdrop for their films.

"I made this film because I was walking around campus and happened to notice how certain areas looked liked the perfect place for a battle scene, or a place where a zombie popped out. It inspired me and I had a lot of fun making it, and I would do it again next year," said Lauren Cunningham, a 4th-semester physiology and neurobiology major.

At the competition, there were a total of eight submissions. There were no restrictions to what genres the films had to be; however, they could not be longer than ten minutes and could not exceed an R rating. The films presented ranged from historical documentaries about Hitler to a comedy about a secret agent to a suspense thriller about a vampire and a film about extreme sports. The films were judged by three judges, as well as the audience, who were given the opportunity to vote for their favorite film.

Continued...

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