Comedic short wins MSU Student Film Festival

A Crosswalk Named Desire takes home first place cash prize

Katie Leibel
Staff Writer

The fourth annual Minnesota State University, Mankato short film festival was Wednesday in the Ostrander Auditorium in the Centennial Student Union.

Four films competed, and one that had been disqualified for copyrighted material was also shown. To enter, students had to create a short film that was less than ten minutes long and submit it before the deadline. Short film topics could be almost anything the students could think of.

Alexander Fry, the Stomper Cinema’s chair for the Student Events Team, built up this event from nothing. He organized the event on his own and worked hard to make it successful. This year, Student Events Team broke its record for audience attendance of the festival.

“Everyone should attend it to see the creativity of the students,” Fry said. “It is fun to watch the films.”

His favorite part of this festival is to watch all of the submissions and see how they display the students’ creativity.

Fry believes this event is important as it helps students who make films on their own showcase them to more people. This festival gave these filmmakers a platform to display their work.

The first film that was shown was “A Crosswalk Named Desire,” by Fletcher Todd. It was a comedic piece about a pedestrian crossing ticking machine that repeated “wait,” over and over to a female who referred to it as “Frank.”

It was implied that the two had been in love, and in the end the woman walked away while “Frank,” yelled “wait,” after her. This film won first place from the judges as it was a creative and silly show of ideas.

The next film was called “Young’s Bay Resort” by Alex Schauer. It showed aerial footage of Lake of the Woods in Canada. A guitar played in the background and views of the forest, campgrounds, lakes and much more were displayed.

The next short film was called the “Student Events Team Documentary” by Heather Schuster. It was about the group and why students should join. The video displayed many of the events that they put on throughout the year including the CSU haunted house, “The Price is Right,” cosmic bingo and more.

Students in the film described their favorite events and the various reasons they joined the student events team. The short film also described the different roles that students play in this group, such as the board members who lead many of the events.

The informative film encouraged students to join the university’s student events team. A member of the group interviewed different students on the team, and edited and filmed the video.

The last video in the competition was titled “From Down Under to Up North,” by Ruby Bambrick. This film was about Bambrick, an international student from Australia, and her journey to and around Minnesota. The film showed her hopes and fears in a silly and comical way.

It was inspirational. She described how she came here without knowing many people, and how she felt alone. Bambrick showed off her new experiences, the places she visited and the lessons she learned. This film won the audience choice award and second place from the judges.

The audience choice award prize was a $25 Visa gift card, the second place prize was a $50 Visa gift card and the first place prize was anything the recipient wanted that was up to $200. The first prize winner also had their film posted on all of the student events team’s social media, and it will be shown before the next film shown in Stomper’s Cinema.

Fry encourages all students interested to submit films next year for the film festival. He also encourages everyone to attend this event again next year and possibly break the record for attendance that was set this year.

Photo: (Courtesy of Student Events Team Facebook page)