The Greater Philadelphia Student Film Festival "is going to be amazing," asserts Brian Walsh, a Cinema Studies Major and festival co-organizer with Sara Axelrod. However, three months ago, their idea was but a pipe dream. Brian and Sara started chatting about organizing a student festival at a UME (Undergraduate Media and Entertainment) Club event at the beginning of the semester. Brian describes their ensuing experience as a snowball effect: "Once it got started, everyone wanted to join."
They both were amazed by local students' enthusiasm to participate in a film festival, which received 65 official film entries in just three weeks with more arriving after the deadline. Sara compares the excitement of bombardment by student films to waiting for college application decisions: "It's like I kept wanting to run home and check the mail. We felt like kids in a candy store ... Brian would call me: 'Sara, we just received another nine entries in the last five hours!'"
However, Sara points out that "there were no runaway hits." Tough decisions had to be made regarding selection for the festival screening which was originally going to feature only the 10 best films. Brian and Sara received so many worthy entries that they decided to expand the festival program: four films are up for Best Experimental, three for Best Documentary, 10 for Best Undergraduate Film and three for Best Grad Film. "It really would have been unfair otherwise," says Sara, "some of these Temple grad films had $10,000 budgets."
In addition to viewing many outstanding student productions, Brian and Sara emphasize their experience building ties with students at local universities. The festival has representatives from Drexel, Temple, Villanova and Montgomery County Community College. Brian says they "wanted things to remain more liquid": the annual event will be held at a different school each year.
However, this year it is at our school: come and view the two-and-a-half hour program of outstanding student filmmaking -- including films by Penn students Michael Kleiman, Andrea Scott, Tadashi Moriyama, Gopal Shah and Andrew Julien -- screened on campus at 7 p.m. today at the recently restored Cine at Penn Theater (the old Cinemagic). And free after-party at MarBar!
