BMCC DIGITAL VIDEO CLUB TAKES AWARD AT FILM FESTIVAL
September 19, 2002
The Digital Video Club at Borough of Manhattan Community College received the platinum best of show award in the student film category in the Aurora Awards film and video competition.
The Digital Video Club received the award for “Out of the Darkness,” a documentary of BMCC’s efforts to reopen within three weeks after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
BMCC lost more than 40 classrooms and laboratories when one of buildings was severely damaged on September 11 and remains closed. For three weeks after the attack on the World Trade Center, classes were suspended while the campus served as an emergency command center for the city’s rescue and recovery effort. Eight current and former students died in the attack or in the rescue effort.
Students in the BMCC Digital Video Club originally created “Out of the Darkness” for a college memorial service on October 31, 2001. The memorial service honored the students who died in the September 11 attack. Later in the year, the Digital Video Club edited the video for showing at the college’s fundraising gala.
“We are enormously proud of our students in the Digital Video Club,” said BMCC President Antonio Pérez. “They are very talented and very hardworking. Their work carries enormous power,” he continued.
The Digital Video Club was founded in the fall of 2001 by BMCC students majoring in the field of Corporate and Cable Communications. David Gallardo, president of the club during the 2001-2002 year, said, “Winning this award is a real honor, especially because the other winners of the Aurora Film Festival included some of the country’s leading corporate and entertainment names.” Some of the other winners included Burson-Marstellar, Lincoln-Mercury, The Sierra Club, The History Channel, Warner Brothers, and WPIX-TV.
“Making Out of the Darkness put us on a road that none of us could have forseen at the time,” noted 2002-2003 club president Christian Moran. Three of the students—David Gallardo, Christian Moran, and Fatima Boone—sent “Out of the Darkness” as a demonstration tape to production companies, and production companies started to contact them with job offers for free-lance work. “We became known as the World Trade Center students,” said Fatima Boone, club vice president. As a result, Gallardo, Moran, and Boone formed their own production company, The Digital Aces. Another video club member, Miguel Bernard, was hired to do video work for the City University of New York.
Students in the BMCC Digital Video Club impressed CBS producers during a Video Boot Camp this summer when they made “Out of the Shadows,” a documentary about the impact of the September 11 events on the Chinatown community.
On September 15, the PBS show, “In the Mix,” ran a special documentary on September 11. Boone and Moran helped to produce the show. Boone interned with In the Mix in the spring 2002 semester. Moran worked as a cameraman and sound operator. Boone also took turns behind the camera.
