30th Student Academy Award® winners announced

Jun 09, 2003 by Ian Evans

Eleven film students from nine U.S. universities were honored yesterday (June 8) as winners in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 30th Annual Student Academy Awards competition. The winners participated in several days of industry-related activities and social events prior to the awards presentation ceremony at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

A film student from Germany also was honored by the Academy, receiving this year’s Honorary Foreign Film Award.

Following are this year’s winners (alphabetical by film title within category):

Alternative Category

  • Gold Medal: The Projects Lumiere, Waleed Moursi, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia

Animation Category

  • Gold Medal: Perpetual Motion, Kimberly Miner, Rochester Institute of Technology (R.I.T.), Rochester, New York
  • Silver Medal: Bert, Moonsung Lee, Academy of Art College, San Francisco
  • Bronze Medal: A Work in Progress, Wes Ball, Florida State University, Tallahassee

Documentary Category

  • Gold Medal: Left Behind, Christof Putzel, Connecticut College, New London
  • Silver Medal: Indiana Aria, Elizabeth Pollock, University of California, Berkeley
  • Bronze Medal: Those Who Trespass, Renee Fischer, Stanford University Palo Alto, California

Narrative Category

  • Gold Medal: La Milpa (The Cornfield), Patricia Riggen, Columbia University, New York
  • Silver Medal: Jesus Henry Christ, Dennis Lee, Columbia University, New York
  • Bronze Medal: fine., Michael Downing and Philip Svoboda, American Film Institute, Los Angeles

Honorary Foreign Film

  • The Red Jacket, Florian Baxmeyer, University of Hamburg, Germany
While the U.S.-based students knew they would each receive an award, the level of that award – gold, silver or bronze – was not revealed until the ceremony. Besides trophies, gold medal winners received $5,000; silver medal winners were awarded $3,000 and bronze medal winners took home $2,000.

Academy President Frank Pierson presented the Honorary Foreign Film Award; Academy Governor Ed Begley Jr. presented awards in the narrative category; Director Michael Apted presented awards in the documentary category and actor and former Student Academy Award winner Bob Saget presented the medals in both the alternative and animation categories.

These students first competed in one of three regional competitions. Each region was permitted to send the Academy as many as three films in each of the four categories. The finalist films were then screened and voted on by Academy members to select the winners.

The Honorary Foreign Film winner, who received a $1,000 cash grant, was selected from a pool of 38 entries from 25 countries. This is the first time a student from Germany’s University of Hamburg has won this award.

The Student Academy Awards were established by the Academy in 1972 to support and encourage excellence in filmmaking at the collegiate level.