UIUC Student Film Festival is a celebration of student filmmaking, organized by students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Our mission is to help make a platform for diverse voices in filmmaking and create an outlet for young filmmakers to show off their talents. UIUC Student Film Festival showcases the talent of filmmakers campus-wide, across all Colleges and Departments. It is d
edicated to providing a platform of diversity, inclusion, social justice and creativity. The Festival helps to ignite intellectual growth, promote critical thinking, and inspire pure entertainment among the students and filmmakers who attend. UIUC Student Film Festival is open to all genres, themes, and categories. Last year, we received over 80 submissions and selected over 40. History
Every spring, the Media and Cinema Studies (MACS) department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a special class. Labeled as MACS 464, the course is focused on educating students about the various film festivals around the world, while also organizing film festival right here on campus run by non other than the students in MACS 464. This festival has existed for multiple iterations of the class over the years and has even gone through a few different names it has gone by. The festival began in 2010 and ran until 2012 under the festival title Movies to the MACS! The course was taught by Richard Leskosky and Ivy Glennon. In 2013, With Richard Potter as the MACS 464’s instructor and mentor, they hosted a new version of the festival, this time calling it the Illini Independent Film Festival. In 2014, headed by Alex Mobley, the festival expanded and was called Etcfilmfest. Programming from Etcfilmfest included live performances from The 92s, an alternative indie pop band from Palos Park, Illinois. Up until 2015, students submitted their films via DVD. But, when the festival began accepting submissions digitally, the festival found its lasting identity, this time the festival going by Illinifest and coordinated by the class instructor, Dora Valkanova. In 2019, Jon Knipp narrowed the submissions requirements to focus exclusively on the UIUC student filmmaking community. Over 40 UIUC students responded and 24 short films were selected. Because of the 2020 COVID 19 pandemic, the Festival moved online and renamed itself the Illini Film Fest for s live streaming event. In 2021, the Festival re-dubbed itself the UIUC Student Film Festival, with the intention of continuing its pledge to offer the best in student-produced cinema. Through MACS 464, students can both learn about film festivals and contribute to the medium's presence in Illinois by creating their own film festival that helps to showcase student talent and the diversity of short films from across the UIUC campus.
