Spring 2024 Film Festival Recognizes Student Innovation and Talent Across Genres

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 BMCC Cinema Arts Club presented the Spring 2024 Student Film Festival in BMCC’s plush Theatre 2 at 199 Chambers Street.

“We had a good crowd, roughly 120 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 Sadists by Jacob Pohorelsky

BEST DOCUMENTARY

The Story Behind the Plate by Abigail Guzman

Honorable Mentions: Hidden Histories: Specter of Srebrenica by Mark Hamer II and Beyond 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 Sadists 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