Student Film Guild presents first film festival

The Student Cinema Guild will present the 2013 Crimson Film Festival at 9 p.m. Monday at the IU Cinema.

The festival will spotlight 12 original short films produced by student and local filmmakers. Tickets for the event are free and available to the public.

Jacob Gabbard, co-president of the Student Cinema Guild, said the group’s film festival complements another film festival that takes place on campus in the spring.

“We came up with the idea for the festival as a way to keep films being made in the fall rather than the huge surge that comes in in April due to Campus Movie Fest,” Gabbard said. “Essentially, this CMF is the main student film festival that takes place in the spring, but we also wanted to have a festival that took place in the fall.”

The group receives submissions for the festival online via Google Drive or DropBox accounts, as well as on DVDs.

In its first year in existence, the festival received 35 submissions, mostly from IU students, Gubbard said.

However, he said the group received many other submissions from filmmakers throughout the state and country.

The guild selected films to screen in the festival through a judging process, narrowing the field down to a group of films that would fit the festival’s two-hour screening at the IU Cinema.

“The judges considered a number of things when screening the films,” Gabbard said. “They looked for original story lines, interesting cinematic techniques and diversity in content to help create an entertaining festival.”

Following the film screenings, an award ceremony will take place honoring select films in the festival.

Gabbard said the films the group has selected for the premiere festival are fantastic and festival-goers should anticipate a night of fantastic amateur films.

“There is a wide variety of films ranging in genre that were almost all made outside of a classroom,” Gabbard said. “It’s so exciting to see the film community in Bloomington blow up the way it has, and even more so it’s super exciting to be part of the growing community by providing events like the Crimson Film Festival to the University and community.”

Follow reporter Carolyn Crowcroft on Twitter @carol_crowcroft.