The Cannes Film Festival may be wrapping up its 11-day run in France this week, but at the Shorttakes Festival in Ackerman Grand Ballroom tonight, they’ll only need three hours.
The Shorttakes Festival is a 14-year-old UCLA tradition that calls all college students to send in their short films (defined as less than 10 minutes) in hopes of being in the final 20 to be exhibited in front of a judging panel of prestigious industry players and an audience of family and friends. The festival is sponsored by the Campus Events Commission (CEC).
“We were really surprised that we were getting stuff from schools like NYU and UNLV that usually don’t submit anything,” said Colin Iberti, the CEC films director and a third-year biochemistry student. “It’s just a nice coincidence that all the films we chose for the festival belong to students from UCLA, USC and Cal Arts.”
Fourth-year Design | Media Arts student Shaun Westbrook not only won a coveted spot in the film narrative competition with “Every Morning,” about what life could have been depending on a seemingly trivial coincidence, but also had two projects, “Lost” and “Found,” qualify as part of the experimental films category, overtaking two of the festival’s three categories.
Graduate film students Raul Cardenas-Rivera and David Badgerow will represent UCLA in the Cal Arts-dominated animation category.
That the countrywide competition was whittled down to a showcase of Southern California talents encourages recent USC graduate Kyle Mooney, who has two films being shown in the narrative competition, because it justifies his choice to study film.
“I think it speaks volumes about the filmmakers in our area; this is obviously the right town to be in if this is what you want to do,” Mooney said. “There are so many people to be influenced by and everyone here usually has a great energy about them.”
Even Michael Lowe, a second-year English student whose short “Countdown” is competing in the same category as Mooney’s films, sees past the school rivalry and admires Mooney’s talent.
“It’s hard enough to create a film in a year. To have two pieces good enough to get into the festival is amazing,” Lowe said. “I think it’s a good thing that they’re showing both (of Mooney’s films) because it shows that we all are working really hard. The films chosen are of good quality so they should have the right to gain that exposure.”
Because Shorttakes is limited to student filmmakers, a group that struggles to find venues to host its creations, participants appreciate the coverage they are afforded through the festival.
“It’s a cool thing because we’re allowed a bit of a safety zone with our peers as (competition) instead of professionals,” Mooney said. “It’s going to be great to see what people are doing at UCLA and it will be nice to get an idea of where I fit among other students who are doing the same things I am.”
With the student budget in mind and the increase of film submissions as an end goal, CEC eliminated the $5 per-entry fee ““ reasoning that the more material they received, the more quality film they might find.
“We wanted to remove as many barriers as possible,” Iberti said. “CEC can take a hit budget-wise if that means that we’re going to make a great event that people will enjoy.”
Lowe, whose film was shot in one day, said that the ease of entering the festival may encourage the submission of less-refined films, but even these projects are worth consideration.
“Having it be free opens the door for a lot more filmmakers. Just because someone doesn’t invest as much money and time in a film, it doesn’t mean that it’s not worth seeing,” Lowe said. “Whenever you create art, you put a lot of yourself in it and that’s always interesting to watch.”
For this reason, the absence of non-Los Angeles-based schools from the festival invites participants to question the artistic merits of those outside the entertainment capital of the world.
“It does make you wonder if there was anything good coming from the East Coast but I don’t doubt the veracity of CEC,” Mooney said. “If we’re seeing the best of the best, then I don’t care where it comes from.”