2/17/05 Contact: Diane B. Clifton, 334/844-9999 (cliftsh@auburn.edu)
David Granger, 334/844-9999 (grangdm@auburn.edu)

JAY SANDERS FILM FESTIVAL TO BE HELD MARCH 16 IN AUBURN

AUBURN – While Hollywood will honor its best and brightest with Oscars at the Academy Awards later this month, in March the Jay Sanders Film Festival will be judging entries from high school and university students across the country and around the world.

For the eighth consecutive year, the Auburn University Department of Communication and Journalism and the Auburn Film Society will offer young filmmakers the opportunity to exhibit their artistic talents to the Auburn community. The Jay Sanders Film Festival will be held at 7 p.m. Wed., March 16 at the AU Hotel and Dixon Conference Center. The event is free to the public, but seating is limited.

“More than 180 entries were accepted into this year’s competition, and judges will narrow the field to the top videos for screening at the festival,” said festival coordinator Emmett Winn, an associate professor of communication.

Endowed by the Movie Gallery Corporation in 2001, the competition awards trophies and cash prizes of $1,000 to first-place winners in the high school and college divisions, $600 to second-place winners in each division and $250 for third-place winners.

Even more important, perhaps, is the honor and prestige that will come to the winners when their films are shown on coming attraction reels in every Movie Gallery store following the festival.

Each year students from high schools and colleges throughout the world are invited to submit original short films for competition in the Movie Gallery Student Video Competition. The Jay Sanders Film Festival features the finalists of this prestigious competition.

Growing in notoriety each year, the festival has international recognition, with several entries arriving from Canada and Nigeria.

The late Jay Sanders initiated and taught film studies at Auburn during a lengthy career as a professor of communication.

For more information, visit the Auburn Film Society web page at http://www.auburn.edu/student_info/film, or contact Danielle Williams, 334/844-2887 (willide@auburn.edu)

Auburn University is a pre-eminent land-grant and comprehensive research institution with nearly 23,000 students and 6,500 faculty and staff. Ranked among the top 50 public universities nationally, Auburn is Alabama’s largest educational institution, offering more than 230 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degree programs.

(Contributed by Diane Clifton.)

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