Come Siskel! Come Ebert!

Student film festival in Union today

UNIQUE is presenting five award-winning films from the 25th Anniversary Student Academy Awards competition.

Sponsored by the Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences (AMPAS), the mini-film festival begins today at 11 a.m. in the University Union Auditorium.

It will be the first event held in the new auditorium which features tiered seating for 170 people.

"It's an unusual program where people on this campus who are interested in films can see student films they probably wouldn't get a chance to see anywhere else," said Dean Sorenson, program advisor for the University Union.

The films are judged in four categories: alternative, animation, documentary and dramatic presentation. The same body of voters who decide the Oscar awards judge these student films.

The Student Academy Awards program recognizes and encourages remarkable films produced by students.

UNIQUE has sponsored and arranged for the presentation to be held at CSUS for the last eight years.

Two winners hail from California universities.

Robin Larsen of UCLA received the Alternative Gold Medal for her film "Sombra.." The film is about a dying woman who is haunted by the memory of a spirit's hold on her child.

Stanford student Yuriko Gamo Romer received the Documentary Gold Medal for her film called "Occidental Encounters." The filmmaker explores merging cultures while in the midst of planning her own mixed marriage.

Previous honorees include Spike Lee, director of "Malcolm X," "Jungle Fever" and the Academy Award nominated film "Four Little Girls;" Bob Saget, star of the sitcom "Full House" and "America's Funniest Home Videos;" and Robert Zemeckis, director of the "Back to the Future" trilogy, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," "Death Becomes Her" and the Academy Award-winning film "Forrest Gump.