UCCS film festival features art, dinner, awards ceremony
The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs kicks off its eighth annual Student Short Film Festival on Saturday. Boy, they sure know how to make a guy feel old.
When my friends and I helped launch the inaugural festival, I wore several hats, including judge and moderator. Everyone involved did. It was a fledgling operation, short on experience but long on passion, juggling only a handful of submissions and screening them before an equally sparse audience.
But as organizers Marshall Rainey and Sarah Lotfi reminded me, those days are long gone.
"Out of all the colleges in this city, we've had the longest-running film festival by years," Rainey said. "We got our name out there first. Even the Indie Spirit Film Festival, which is going on as we speak, is only in its second year."
The Student Short Film Festival has become one of the most eagerly anticipated events on the UCCS community calendar, and this year it's bigger than ever. Rainey and Lotfi said they've received a record number of submissions and are expecting hundreds to pack Dwire Hall's auditorium, a venue the festival moved to after outgrowing the university's theater.
But size isn't all this year's festival has going for it. It's also UCCS's most lavish.
Numerous artistic disciplines from across the university will be represented, including multimedia art displays and an onstage chamber ensemble, followed by an extravagant dinner and a faculty-led awards ceremony.
This year's films cover a wide spectrum of genres.
"We've got a lot of live action comedy and drama including the story of a death row inmate and a World War II Russian epic," Rainey said. "We've got numerous experimental films, a bunch of documentaries covering the gamut from the environment to Colorado Springs' own acting legend Lon Chaney, music videos, animation and a new category this year that we're really excited about - alumni/faculty."
Lotfi, who not only helped organize the festival but has a short in the running, says the films keep getting better and better. "If students can be encouraged by what we're putting out, and if we can challenge and inspire them to push their own work, I really see this becoming an event that stands up to other major universities. I truly believe that could happen. This festival is a major milestone for this university. We worked very hard to make this an interdisciplinary event, bringing together artistic groups from across the university."
Although the students credit Robert von Dassanowsky, the director of UCCS's film-studies program, for raising the profile of film on campus, von Dassanowsky says the students really deserve the credit for building such a terrific festival.
"I helped the UCCS Film Club found the festival after the creation of the film-studies program here," he said. "But it has been in the hands of the students from Visual and Performing Arts and the Communication Department ever since. They've turned it into the phenomenal success it is today. This is and has always been all about the students."
The 8th Annual UCCS Student Film Festival
When: 3-10 p.m. Saturday; multi-media art starts at 3 p.m.; performance by UCCS Student Chamber ensemble at 3:30 p.m.; student film showcase 4-7 p.m.; award ceremony at 8 p.m.
Where: Dwire Hall, Room 121 on the UCCS campus
Admission: Free.
