The fifth annual Oglethorpe University Student Film Festival, also called Last Looks, will take place on Feb. 28.
This year’s Last Looks will feature 30 short films all made by Oglethorpe students. The event will take place at Lupton Auditorium starting at 7 p.m.
The student film festival first started in the fall of 2019 around the same time that the university’s Film and Media Studies program started, according to Senior Lecturer Ron Burgess. Film and Media Studies became an official part of Oglethorpe the semester after the first festival.
“We had students that were making projects, short films, videos for class,” Burgess said. “[The festival] was a chance for the students to show their work, a chance for them to enjoy the films with their other fellow students and family members, but also for people from the university or even outside of the university to come and get a chance to do that.”
Since the first festival, Last Looks has grown in more ways than one. There are now more categories, and the judges looking over the students’ work are industry professionals. The quality of the films has also grown, said Burgess.
“We’re seeing the students enter a film when they’re a freshman, and then maybe another one when they’re a sophomore,” Burgess said. “By the time they get to be a junior/senior, you see the films grow in quality, and they try different things.”
Categories for the film festival include documentary and narrative, both with time limits of five minutes or less. The experimental category has a time limit of two minutes or less, while the promotional category must be one minute or less.
Each film has the opportunity to compete for the festival’s Capturing Culture Award. In order to win the award, the film in question must deal with the subject of race and/or culture. The festival will award prizes to the top three films.