At the fourth Ivy Film Festival, held April 8-11 at Brown University, two films produced by Penn undergraduates took home top prizes in their respective categories.
College junior Josh Gorin was awarded Best Undergraduate Comedy for his piece Winning Caroline, and recent Engineering graduate Kiran Pallegadda won Best Undergraduate Drama for his film Elevator View.
"It was obviously a great feeling," Gorin said. "It's always nice to hear that other people enjoy [your film], that it's not just for you, but others find it funny" as well.
Pallegadda echoed Gorin's sentiments, also noting the highly competitive nature of the film categories.
"It was really surprising. I had seen everyone else's stuff, and I was really impressed," Pallegadda said. "I felt very proud just to have the work shown. ... I was really honored."
Other Penn affiliates attending the film festival applauded the awards as well. Wesley Barrow, a College junior and president of the Talking Film club, noted Penn's success despite a narrow list of contending pieces.
"To have two of the six Penn productions win at [the festival] was really spectacular," Barrow said. "It's really amazing for a single school to sweep [the drama and comedy] categories."
Winning Caroline is a romantic comedy produced entirely by Gorin and his hometown friends, who are currently enrolled at Penn State, Harvard and Princeton.
Titled the Blitzfilme Project, the group works to write, produce and edit short films all within the three weeks of winter break.
"The idea is to make a movie as quickly as possible," Gorin said. "It's just something to do over winter break."
Last year, Blitzfilme produced Shadow of a Lie, a satirical film noir that was shown at the 2003 festival. Although the piece did not win an award, Gorin noted that the production played an important role in this year's success.
"This year, we really buckled down. It was far more of an organized effort," Gorin said. The new film "looks a lot better and cleaner. We put more thought into it."
In contrast to Winning Caroline, Pallegadda's Elevator View is a film characterized by drama and suspense.
In the 12-minute film, a bored apartment security guard begins to have hero fantasies. The dreams materialize shortly thereafter, and the guard is forced to chase down a moving elevator and diffuse the situation inside.
Pallegadda first wrote his story in a screenwriting class during the spring 2003 semester. The idea to turn the script into a movie, however, did not come until several months later.
"It was something that I wanted to do, but I didn't fully decide until the summer," Pallegadda said. "I thought it was doable. I ended up going through the whole process" of producing a movie.
With success and experience under their belts, both Gorin and Pallegadda said they hope to continue their filmmaking careers.
Pallegadda, who has started work on a new film, emphasized his wish to progress slowly.
"It's a pretty rough industry," Pallegadda said. "I don't want to jump into anything right now. I'm pretty happy taking it one step at a time."
Gorin plans to pursue a degree from the newly created Cinema Studies program, which will make its debut in the fall. Beyond college, the producer hopes to enter the entertainment industry and perhaps enroll in film school.
