Veritas Short Filmmaking Club at the University of Maryland, hosted its first film festival on Nov. 17. The festival featured a panel Q&A with four industry professionals, an awards ceremony and a screening of the selected films.
“Film festivals like this one today are so valuable,” Caroline Eades, director of the program in Cinema and Media Studies, said in her opening remarks. “They are relevant, they are stimulating.”
The film festival started with a panel of four local film professionals: Penny Lee, Liza Slutskaya, Christian Oh, and Sherwyn Santos. They each talked about their journeys to their careers in film, some working as remote editors in Maryland and others as producers in big cities like New York and Los Angeles.
While Santos suggested moving to a major city would be the best way to break into the film industry, Oh’s rebuttal was supported by Lee and Slutskaya.
“This is the documentary capital of the county,” Oh said. “We have so much pre-production and post-production out here.”
The three panelists, Oh, Lee and Slutskaya, agreed that big film companies would seek out talented individuals regardless of location.
“If you’re good at what you do, it’s not who you know, it’s who knows you,” Lee said.
Veritas received 51 short film submissions from universities all over the country that were judged and selected by UMD faculty.
The festival showcased a wide variety of films, from “Fall to Blossom,” a live-action short that explored grief and cultural nuance, to “Cheeky,” an animated short in which two colorful characters playfully slap each other’s bottoms for the entirety of the film.
“Fall to Blossom,” directed by Ziyan Xue from the School of Visual Arts, won Best Short Film.
“The Vietnam Action,” directed by Chenghao “Clone” Wen from New York University, won Best Documentary. “Dandelion,” directed by Zhengwu Gu and Ling Zhao from Ringling College of Art and Design, won Best Animation.
Students voted on ‘Veritas Choice,’ a fourth category reserved for UMD student films. “Every Loss a Hurricane,” directed by Lillian Elliot from UMD, was selected as the UMD filmmaking winner.
After the awards ceremony concluded, the selected films and honorary mentions were screened. The audience then had a chance to vote, with “Dandelion” winning the Audience Choice Award.
Emily Lin is the vice president and head of screenwriting of Veritas Short Films. She and the other board members were interested in creating an event that would unite more student filmmakers.
“We had this idea. We wanted to make a film festival,” Lin said. “We wanted to really expand and do something to celebrate all the student filmmakers because we feel they deserve to have a spotlight put on them.”
The Veritas board members wanted to include a panel of professionals to help student filmmakers learn more about entering the industry.
“We thought it would be a nice idea to have a panel of people to speak to them because this area is not super well known for film, and we know a lot of people in our club have a hard time envisioning how they would pursue a career starting from this area,” Lin said.
After this year’s successful event, the Veritas board members hope to host another film festival next semester or this time next year that will attract more of the UMD film community.