Film students will showcase their hard work and stylish attire on the red carpet during City College’s first Film Screening and Awards Gala next Friday.
“We’re going to ask everyone to dress up [and] pretend for one night like it’s the Oscars,” said event coordinator Mikhael Catapang. “We will have a couple of videographers and reporters outside just being silly, asking people what they’re wearing and what they’re excited about.”
The night will feature this semester’s best student films, with montages and short video skits, a red carpet and an awards ceremony. Film professors will serve as judges and present the awards. It will be held from 5 to 8 p.m., Friday May 17, in the BC Forum on west campus.
The idea came about four weeks ago when Catapang and other film students were casually having lunch in the cafeteria, which later evolved into a 15 member committee.
“We have a lot of very beautiful films this year,” he said. “This semester, the people who are really serious and talented are taking upper division classes so we said, ‘let’s do a film awards.’”
Ten awards are up for grabs such as best director, screenplay, picture, cinematography and an audience choice award.
“Hopefully, it’s something that they can use if ever they decide to apply to film school,” Catapang said.
Catapang and co-coordinator Alexander Rosengren expect to fill the forum and welcome people of the community to attend, though seats are limited.
“We want to inspire the film production students to create better projects, and… host an audience for them, even if [the forum] just fits 150 people,” Rosengren said.
For coming semesters, they hope future film students will book the Garvin Theatre which can hold up to 400 guests.
“We want to leave this as our legacy,” said Catapang. “Next semester, [students] can organize their own committee and they’re going to have the website… and the relationships that we’ve built with all the faculty.”
The School of Media Arts department used to showcase their work at the end of each semester. However, because of budget cuts two years ago, the event no longer exists and even if it did, according to Catapeng, student films would not be the highlight of it.
“This is a more focused event,” he said.
Film department chair Curtis Bieber said past students have attempted to create a similar event to the screening and awards night with no success.
“They find out that it’s a lot to organize, that it’s really difficult to put together…” he said, “so these guys are really to be congratulated because they’ve put together a very big program in a short amount of time.”
Tickets are $5 and can be bought from ticketing coordinator Ramòn Servaas, through the City College film awards’ website or Facebook page.
For more information, visit: http://sbccfilmawards.webs.com/ or https://www.facebook.com/events/486987174701328/
