CHINESE filmmakers were among those honored at the 46th Student Academy Awards ceremony held last week at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, California, the United States. The Student Academy Awards is an international student film competition conducted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and the Academy Foundation. This year’s event presented 16 Student Academy Awards. Chinese student filmmaker, Sun Yifan, won the gold medal in the Documentary (International Film Schools) category for her film “Family Squared,” which follows a Chinese girl, Lola, who was adopted into a Belgian family as an infant, as she fulfills her dream of reuniting with her biological parents when Lola’s two families met for the first time last year. Sun was born in Hohhot in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region in 1988 and received a Bachelor’s degree in film studies at the Beijing Film Academy in 2009. Because of her admiration for film director Krzysztof Kieslowski, Sun now attends the Lodz Film School in Poland. She describes her documentary as a cultural and emotional journey between East and West. “The love for Lola links two families in two faraway continents, forming a big, happy family,” she says. “I’m so happy to win a gold medal at the Student Oscars. When I got the call from the academy to invite me to this ceremony, I couldn’t believe it,” she adds. Another film, “The Chef,” directed by Hao Zheng from the American Film Institute, won the silver medal in the Narrative (Domestic Film Schools) category. The film, a dark comedy drama set in a future where all laborious work is done by androids, focuses on Pu, a Chinese chef in his 60s who is ordered to teach one of them his cooking skills. “The award is not only for me, but also for the many Chinese students who come to the United States to study film art,” says the young director, noting that he hopes to show Chinese culture to the Western world through his films. The producer and co-writer of “The Chef,” Deng Yixian, says the story is a thought-provoking look at the historical pattern of human development and its future. Another co-writer of the film, Kong Leqi, attributes the success of the film to teamwork, noting that those integral to the production hail from China and other Asian countries. The Student Academy Awards were established in 1972 to support and encourage excellence in filmmaking at the collegiate level. Among them, previous Student Academy Award winners have gone on to receive 62 Oscar nominations and have won or shared 12 awards. This year, the Student Academy Awards competition received a total of 1,615 entries from 255 U.S. colleges and universities and 105 applications from international schools. The filmmakers’ works are judged in seven categories: four domestic school categories (animation, documentary, narrative and alternative) and three international school categories (animation, documentary and narrative). (Xinhua) | 