May 17, 2000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Leslie Unger - (310) 247-3000

                        lunger@oscars.org

Beverly Hills, CA - Twelve film students from eight U.S. universities have been selected by members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as winners in the 27th annual Student Academy Awards competition. They will participate in a week of industry-related activities and social events, culminating with the Awards ceremony on June 11. A film student from Germany has also been selected to receive this year's Honorary Foreign Student Film award.

Following are this year's winners (alphabetical within category by film title):

Alternative Category

• "Dear Sir: Letters to a Union Soldier," Michael Mullan and Jessica Lakis, University of the Arts, Philadelphia.
• "Helicopter," Ari Gold, New York University.

Animation Category

• "Al Tudi Tuhak" ("Long, Long Ago"), Tod Polson, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California.
• "The Bad Plant," Amy Winfrey, University of California, Los Angeles.
• "Luz," Jose Javier Martinez, University of California, Los Angeles.

Documentary Category

• "Between Two Fires," Douglas Noel Smith, Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• "Iron Ladies," Kennedy Wheatley, University of Southern California.
• "Slender Existence," Laura C. Murray, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.

Narrative Category

• "Homeland," Doug Scott, New York University.
• "One Day Crossing," Joan L. Stein, Columbia University, New York.
• "6 Miles of 8 Feet," Ben Tomlin, New York University.

Honorary Foreign Film

• "Quiro ser," Florian Gallenberger, Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film, Munich, Germany.

While the students know they will each receive an award, the level of that award - gold, silver or bronze - will not be revealed until the June 11 ceremony. Besides trophies, gold medalists receive $2,000, silver medalists are awarded $1,500 and bronze medal recipients are presented with $1,000.

Students first competed in one of three regional competitions. Each of those regions was permitted to send to the Academy as many as three films in each of the four categories as finalists. Academy members then screened the films and voted to select the winners.

The Honorary Foreign Film winner was selected from an original pool of 26 submissions from 19 countries. This is the fourth year in a row and the sixth time overall that a German student film has won the Honorary Foreign Student Award, although only one other winner was a student of the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film in Munich (Katja von Garnier, 1994). Germany now holds the record for the number of times a student has won the award, followed by England, which has been represented four times.

The Student Academy Awards were established by the Academy in 1972 to support and encourage excellence in filmmaking at the collegiate level.