By Tom Karsch
You wouldn’t know just by looking at it, but a run-down two-bedroom apartment with peeling white paint in the middle of the Virginia Highland was the birthplace of the world’s largest student film festival.
Four friends – David Roemer, Dan Costa, Vijay Makar, and Ajay Pillarisetti – were students at Emory University in 2001 when they decided to see what would happen if they gave their fellow classmates some Apple laptops, camcorders and one week to make their own five-minute films. That first year, they surprised everyone, including themselves, when they packed Glenn Memorial Auditorium full of 1,500 filmmakers and fans to watch the very first Campus MovieFest finale.
The four students founded Ideas United, a company now with 25 full-time staff and 100 more around the globe, running Campus MovieFest, music events, and a production company that leverages the best of the next generation of content creators.
Today, Campus MovieFest boasts over 500,000 student participants at over 100 schools. The CMF filmmakers continue to receive all the gear they need to make short movies for free, with campus events throughout the school year. The top movies from each school then compete for a chance to screen at CMF Hollywood, an international event featuring awards, receptions, and workshops with industry professionals held at the major studios in Los Angeles. CMF movies are also shown at screenings at the Cannes International Film Festival, in-flight on Virgin America, on television, and various outlets online including campusmoviefest.com.
CMF’s talented young filmmakers also get invited to an exclusive network as part of Ideas United Productions, started as a way to get professional and paid experience for top CMF filmmakers, and provide high-quality, authentic, yet lower cost, content for companies ranging from AT&T, Panasonic, and Revlon to smaller businesses looking to leverage local talent.
Though they’ve moved on from that old house in Virginia Highland to larger more secure offices in Decatur, it’s still a growing company with a simple mission; to give students everywhere the opportunity to share their stories with the world.
There are hundreds of films on the Campus MovieFest website, for starters I would recommend two films from their alma mater that have won major awards at the last two grand finales. The first is student Ian Chi’s Tick Tock, which was chosen among thousands of entries as Best Picture for 2011, and The Gerstein Report, produced by Emory students, Matthew Fennell and Matthew Ryckman and winner of Best Drama at the 2010 International Grand Finale.
Tom Karsch is the former EVP/GM of Turner Classic Movies and is the founder of Camp Flix, a new summer filmmaking camp for kids.