Student filmmakers have lots of opportunities to get exposure with Campus Movie Fest and their affiliates. Though Campus Movie Fest may not be coming to the University of Utah this fall, that shouldn’t stop student filmmakers from creating new works. An opportunity just opened up called Elfenworks Social Justice Category, and any college student can submit a film.
Julia Howard, the Campus Movie Fest Marketing Coordinator explained “The Elfenworks Foundation is an organization that really tries to promote social justice change and inspire hope in people. So what they do with us is they sponsor us for this category where students can make a five minute or less film about any social justice issue. So, that can be anything…poverty, racism, sexism, different socio-economic issues, things like that. And if you make your film about that you can submit it to the Elfenworks category. Any student, any schools.” If your film makes it to first place the prize is $10,000.
Another aspect of Campus Movie Fest is the Terminus awards in Atlanta — a film festival mixed with a conference. The winner of the Elfenworks Category will be announced at Terminus and their film will be shown there as well. Terminus also features films from Campus Movie Fest but isn’t limited to just Elfenworks or CMF. “Terminus is even bigger than CMF…it’s our national competition and it’s also open to people who submit from elsewhere. So we have people who are still in college [and]…professionals submit,” Howard said. They even have a video game category and University of Utah student Sam Wilson took home three of the four awards in the gaming category last year.
Even if you don’t win Terminus, it is a great chance to learn and meet other filmmakers through workshops from people in the industry. Robert Di Nero was one of the big names last year at the festival/conference. Terminusevent.com has all the details you need if you want to attend or submit a film.
“So we have all those other opportunities that kind of go hand-in-hand with CMF…these are the options if CMF is not on your campus, there is still a whole lot of stuff you can do,” Howard said. To check out the rules and watch the films of past winners for Elfenworks Social Justice Category visit campusmoviefest.com/elfenworks