2013 Finalists

Undergrad Film

 

Burnt Sugar

Director: Morgan Ingari

Director of Photography: Anthony Svatek

Alice has one day to bake sixty cupcakes for her daughter Lucy’s 1st grade heritage day and prove that they can both hack it in Suburbia; however it takes some burnt sugar to realize that their best way in might be to stand out.

 

Tryouts

Director: Lauren Ciaravalli

Director of Photography: Benjamin Dewey

School play auditions become the ultimate challenge when Violet, a shy 16 year-old realizes she must face her first kiss on stage.

 

Bombshell

Director: Erin Sanger

Director of Photography: Nate Hurtsellers

A ten year-old tomboy must weigh her loyalty to her trusted older brother as she becomes complicit in a hate crime to win his affection.

 

Graduate Film

 

The Earthquake

Director: Danielle Lessovitz

Director of Photography: Anna Stypko

In a cramped Brooklyn apartment nine days after the earthquake in Haiti a pregnant refugee fears she’s carrying a stillborn while Haitian children play a dangerous game in the next room.

 

Anna & Jermone

Director: Melanie Delloye

Director of Photography: Leonardo D’Antoni

Anna hasn’t always done things right, but she wants to change. She wants to be a good mother.

 

Chin Up

Director: Michelle Walson

Director of Photography: Jeremy Brunjes

Days before Wendy Bloom will undergo corrective jaw surgery, her surgeon suggests an additional cosmetic procedure, throwing Wendy into an existential crisis about her appearance and lackluster love life.

 

Sight and Sound

 

The End

Director: Olivia Tant

A bride trapped in the subconscious of her worst nightmare discovers the haunting truth of her groom to be.

 

A Toothfairy Tale

Director: Shannon Brown

Toothfairies go through puberty too.

 

The Cook, The Thief, The Bag, The Officer, His Love and Her Ring

Director: Lily Van Leeuwen

A thief steals a bag, but instead of valuables he finds only trouble inside it.

 

Animation

 

Old House

Director: Emma Noble

A woman leaves her home, but it is not ready to see her go.

 

Undergrad Short Screenplay

 

The End

Written by: Emma Jay

When film student, Charlie, looks into having her main character commit suicide, her friends and family mistake her research for signs of an at risk teen.

 

Under The Big Top

Written by: Nara DeMuro

Graham Walsh takes a whimsically fantastic trip to the circus that isn’t quite what it seems.

 

The Hard Dones

Written by: Jesy Rae Buhl

During a violent blizzard, a bartender discovers the body of a local drug dealer while working a late shift at the bar.

 

Grad Short Screenplay

 

To Get To The Other Side

Written by: Ashley Sims

When a young turtle finds himself on the wrong side of the highway from his family, he must work together with his new friends to get to the other side before it’s too late.

 

Volta

Written by: Stella Kyriakopoulos

For Marissa, a struggling single mother in contemporary Athens, there is nothing more beautiful than seeing her daughter Nina eat.

 

Black Girl in Paris

Written by: Kiandra Parks

A contemporary tale of passion, adventure and uninhibited sexual freedom as one young woman navigates her way through the City of Lights.

 

Undergrad Feature

 

America’s High Five

Written by: Bianca Wasson

Caught in the midst of Detroit’s economic depression and party lifestyle, three friends struggle to make ends meet despite snared aspirations for a future elsewhere.

 

Little Miss Perfect

Written by: Marlee Roberts

Haunted by a beast in her reflection, Belle, an over ambitious teenager, pursues perfection of lightness and ultimate self-control by refusing to eat: only to find out she was manipulated into this by her best friend.

 

Johnny Bishop Fooled Around

Written by: Saila Reyes

When town princess, Lyla Bellamy, gets left at the altar by conman Johnny Bishop, she trades her parasol for a Colt 45 and sets out to seek revenge.

 

Grad Feature

 

String of Pearls

Written by: Eve Crusto

It is 1944 and Jeanette is a Creole woman who must decide between two worlds, one old and one new, and two men, one white and one black, in the midst of a war that may destroy it all.

 

The Real Mikado

Written by: Joyce Wu

An out-of-work Asian American actress moves back to her parents’ home in a small town where the city council, facing budget cuts, threatens to shut down the community theater so she agrees to direct a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado in the hopes of saving the theater.

 

All The Stories in the World

Written by: Allison Davis

An outcast teen cons the nation with a publicity stunt to save her beloved bookstore from going out of business.

 

Doc Pitch

 

Insha’Allah (God Willing)

Director: Jean Lee and Kyle Haskett

When a San Francisco medical team follows an Iraqi-American doctor to Kurdistan to perform three living donor liver transplants, they encounter six individuals: a thirteen year old boy and his mother, an alcoholic and his unforgiving brother, and a woman forced into an arranged marriage with her ailing husband. These are their stories.

 

The Tree

Director: Kate Twomey

The little-known journey of the world’s largest spruce.

 

Disorganized Crime

Director: T.J. Parsell

This documentary explores the criminogenic risk factors that contribute to youth crime. Is it nature or nurture?

 

The Reinvention of Flight

Director: Sally Foster

Get an insiders view of extreme sports B.A.S.E. jumping junkies from all over the globe during this international chase for the ultimate adrenaline high.

 

Fred The Town Dog

Director: Ava Lowrey

Rockford, Alabama was a struggling small town that lost its way, until a four legged friend showed up and brought the community back together.

 

City of Doves: Pigeon Cultures of New York

Director: Rowena Potts

A portrait of New York through the lens of the relationship of its diverse inhabitants to a ubiquitous feature of its environment: the domestic pigeon, or Rock Dove.

 

TV Pilot

 

The Hilltop

Written by: Lauren Ciaravalli

When Nick and Lucy, twins who are total opposites, move in with their cousin Artie, they are thrown together as the new kids as Ocean Hills High, and it’s the beginning of a whole lot of drama, mistakes, and Jersey Shore parties.

 

Lift Off!

Written by: Names: Kasey Morrison, Michael Buckholtz, Sinead Persaud

In a remote NASA office, a lowly space toilet engineer faces the hijinks of his misfit co-workers whilst pursuing his dream of rocketing to the moon.

 

Broken Tides

Written by: Anya Leta

In the city where people go to die, they must confront their lives first.