2008 Student Academy Awards Winners

The Student Academy Awards ceremony honored the following student filmmakers for their achievements in the alternative, animation, documentary, narrative and honorary foreign film categories.

Alternative
Shih-Ting Hung University of Southern California	GOLD MEDAL AWARD “Viola: The Traveling Rooms of a Little Giant” Seven-year-old Viola, trying to discover the world, puts solitude in her suitcase and begins her dreamy journey.	View Clip
	Shih-Ting Hung was born in Taiwan and raised on a fisherman’s island, Pescadores. She attended National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, which she considers her favorite city in the world, and earned her MBA in fine arts in 2003. Shih-Ting currently attends the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.

Phoebe Tooke San Francisco State University	SILVER MEDAL AWARD “Circles of Confusion” A meditative, experiential record of the filmmaker’s return to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.	View Clip
	Phoebe Tooke grew up in New Orleans, and her family still resides there, so it is no surprise that she chose Hurricane Katrina’s impact on the city as the subject of her film. Phoebe graduated with a degree in sociology from the University of Vermont in 1995. She went on to study film at San Francisco State University and has been living in San Francisco for the past 13 years.

Animation
Nicole Mitchell California Institute of the Arts	GOLD MEDAL AWARD “Zoologic” A fussy zookeeper maintains strict order in his zoo by arranging the animals to his liking.	View Clip
	Born and raised in Cupertino, California, Nicole Mitchell received a BFA in character animation from California Institute of the Arts in 2007.

Tatchapon Lertwirojkul School of Visual Arts, New York	SILVER MEDAL AWARD “Simulacra” In the vast galaxy, there is a robot planet on which every natural living thing is extinct – or is it?	View Clip
	Born in Bangkok, Thailand, Tatchapon Lertwirojkul graduated from the Architectural Department of Chulalongkorn University in March 2001. Tatchapon currently attends the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Evan Mayfield Ringling College of Art and Design	BRONZE MEDAL AWARD “The Visionary” It isn’t easy to make the transition from glasses to contacts.	View Clip
	Evan Mayfield, originally from Fairhope, Alabama, graduated in 2008 with a degree in computer animation from the Ringling College of Art and Design.

Documentary
Laura Waters Hinson American University	GOLD MEDAL AWARD “As We Forgive” Two Rwandan women come face-to-face with the men who slaughtered their families during the 1994 genocide.	View Clip
	Laura Waters Hinson recently received her Master of Fine Arts degree in film and media arts from American University in Washington, D.C. This film is Laura’s thesis project and first full-length film. “As We Forgive” has been in production since the fall of 2005.

J.J. Adler Columbia University	SILVER MEDAL AWARD “Unattached” The modern Orthodox Jewish community of New York is up in arms over a “singles crisis.”	View Clip
	New York City native J.J. Adler graduated from Columbia University in 2004 with a BA in Film Studies. She currently attends Columbia University School of the Arts Film Division and expects to graduate in 2009.

Brian Davis University of Southern California	BRONZE MEDAL AWARD “If a Body Meet a Body” Workers and their day-to-day tasks provide insights in to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office and laboratories.	View Clip
	Brian Davis is from Crozet, Virginia, a small town outside of Charlottesville. He graduated from the University of Virginia with a BA in Media Studies in May 2002. Brian is currently a MFA candidate at University of Southern California.

Narrative
Rajeev Dassani University of Southern California	GOLD MEDAL AWARD “A Day’s Work” A simple job escalates into a violent misunderstanding when an American family hires three immigrant laborers to help them with a move.	View Clip
	Rajeev Dassani, from Raleigh, North Carolina, graduated in 2002 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in communications. Rajeev, an identical twin who likes to paint, draw and write short stories, completed his film “A Day’s Work” for his thesis at the University of Southern California.

Z. Eric Yang Florida State University	SILVER MEDAL AWARD “The State of Sunshine” Two siblings who illegally entered Florida from China must engage in prostitution to pay off their smugglers.	View Clip
	Originally from Shanghai, China, Eric attended Shanghai Jiao Tong University, where he received a BA in materials sciences in 1996. In 2003 Eric graduated with a MA in Communications from the University of Memphis and went on to study film at Florida State University.

Melanie McGraw University of Southern California	BRONZE MEDAL AWARD “Pitstop” Thoughtful, introverted, 12-year-old Maggie feels invisible sandwiched between her eight rambunctious siblings on a drive across the desert.	View Clip
	Melanie McGraw grew up in Hyattsville, Maryland. She graduated with a BA in English from Brigham Young University in 1993 and went on to study film at the University of Southern California.

Honorary Foreign Film
Reto Caffi Academy of Media Arts, Cologne Germany	“On the Line (Auf Der Strecke)” A security guard is secretly in love with a clerk in a department store’s bookshop.	View Clip
	Reto Caffi hails from Berne, Switzerland. Reto graduated from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland with degrees in English literature and journalism, and completed his Student Academy Award® film while attending the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany.

© Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences