At Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC/CUNY), students gain valuable career skills as they screen their original films to a live audience and before a panel of esteemed film industry judges.
On May 5, the BMCCCinema Arts Clubpresented the Spring 2024 Student Film Festival in BMCC’s plush Theatre 2 at 199 Chambers Street.
“We had a good crowd, roughly120 people total,” says Media Arts and Technology Professor and documentary filmmaker Anastassios Rigopoulos. “Ninety films were submitted and 79 played in competition.”
Each BMCC film festival is elevated by the seriousness with which it is judged. The 2024 Spring Film Festival judges were location manager and DGA member Ellen Athena Catsikeas; actor and producer Alfredo Huereca, and director Sara Seligman.
“The judges took time away from their own busy careers and carefully watched many hours’ worth of films,” says Professor Rigopoulos. “They took copious notes and deliberated for almost three hours to determine the winners and honorable mentions. I was present during the Zoom deliberation and was touched to see they had studied each and every film in depth and were able to expertly pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of each film.”
Festival judge Ellen Athena Catsikeas is an assistant production manager and DGA location manager with 25+ years of experience in film and TV. Her recent credits include Tesla with Ethan Hawke, which was a Sundance Award winner; To Dust with Matthew Broderick, which was a Tribeca Film Festival Award winner and Trouble No More, a feature-length documentary on Bob Dylan, which premiered at the New York Film Festival.
Alfredo Huereca, an international actor born in Mexico, has received several Best Actor awards from the Spanish Critics Association in NYC and from HOLA-NY. He was also nominated as Best Actor by the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle in 2020. Mr. Huereca wrote, produced and starred in Cadena Perpetua (Life Sentence), a short film that was the Official Selection in 18 international film festivals, from which his film received 11 awards. He has appeared in shows including Law and Order: Organized Crime Unit, The Blacklist; Netflix’s Monarca and Daughter of Two Mothers (first two seasons).
Sara Seligman was born and raised in Mexico and moved to New York City in 2005 to pursue her dream of becoming a filmmaker. After graduating from the New York Film Academy, she worked in production, development and post-production in film, television and advertising. Her directorial feature debut, Coyote Lake, starring Adriana Barraza and Camila Mendes, made its mark with a premiere on HBO. Ms. Seligman is now directing episodes 105 and 106 of the MGM series “Hotel Cocaine,” set to premiere June 16.
The student winners of the 2024 Student Film Festival span every film genre, and are as follows:
BEST FICTION FILM
Magnet by Hein Win Kyaw
Honorable Mentions: Every Hour Wounds, the Last One Kills by Gennesis Gomez and The sad*sts by Jacob Pohorelsky
BEST DOCUMENTARY
The Story Behind the Plate by Abigail Guzman
Honorable Mentions: Hidden Histories: Specter of Srebrenica by Mark Hamer II andBeyond the Borderline by Daiane Quicine
BEST ANIMATION
Stay by Emilia Purwandi
Honorable Mentions: Rat Ninja by Yailenis Rodriguez Diaz and Dance, Don’t Walk by Duncan Morimoto Brown
BEST CLIENT-BASED FILM (COMMERCIAL OR PSA)
Chocofreta by Nicholas Schmolovsky
Honorable mentions: Black Lab Café by Lolita Sanchez Carrion and Made in BMCC: Portrait of Katelyn Walrond-Scottby Hanna Lomakina, Valeriya Fadeyeva, Becky Lamming and Kevin Smith for Career Connected Learning
BEST MONTAGE OR EXPERIMENTAL FILM
Zombie Montage by Helen Miranda
Honorable Mention: The Nerves Reminded Me by Frank Glass
BEST MUSIC VIDEO
Balance by Jerome “King Joffy” the Director
BEST DIRECTING (TIE)
Katherine Monroy for The Closet Letter and Hanna Lomakina for Made in BMCC: Portrait of Katelyn Walrond-Scott
BEST ACTING
Yanxi Deng for Imposter in Sheep’s Clothing
BEST SCREENPLAY
Katherine Monroy for The Closet Letter
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Mark Hamer II for Hidden Histories: Specter of Srebrenica
Honorable Mention: Hanna Lomakina for Made in BMCC: Portrait of Katelyn Walrond-Scott
BEST SOUND
Ralph Marquinez for Let It Out
Honorable Mentions: Chuck Rockford and Brenton Oeshle for The Nerves Reminded Me and
Elizabeth Hernandez for Box
BEST EDITING
Briana Ceron for Talk to Her
Honorable Mentions: Jacob Pohorelsky for The sad*sts and Daiane Quicine for Anatomy of a Marriage
VIEWERS’ CHOICE AWARDS
Stony SOS x Hidden Julez: Like U by David Lynch
MVRP FOUNDATION RISING STAR AWARD
David Lynch
The Rising Star Award is presented by the Michael Vincent Rosen Peptone Foundation (MVRP) at each BMCC Film Festival in memory of the late Michael Vincent Rosen-Pipitone, a BMCC student and talented actor, writer, artist and comedian.
Just in! BMCC students and alumni garner awards at CUNY Film Festival, May 11 and 12
In addition to the award-winning students at the BMCC 2024 Student Film Festival, a number of BMCC students and alumni were finalists and winners in the CUNY Film Festival, held May 11 and 12.
The finalists included Javier Chen, Roberto Cohetero Flores, Renzo Esposito, Raul Flecha Villasboa, Miles Fogle and Korie Tristan Prince.
From those finalists, four winners emerged.
Roberto Cohetero Flores walked away with Best Cinematography for Hollow-ween.
Renzo Esposito was awarded Best Documentary, Undergrad, for Talk Louder. Also, he won Best Narrative, Undergrad, for Très Chic.
Korie Tristan Prince was awarded Best Screenplay for Sacramentum.
BMCC Professor Robert Würzburg was among the judges.
