Emory University News Release

Release date: March 9, 2004
Contact: Deb Hammacher, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0644 or dhammac@emory.edu

Emory Alumnus Spearheads Campus Moviefest

For the last three years, hundreds of Emory University students have spent a frantic week each spring armed with movie cameras and laptops to unleash the future Oscar-winner lurking within. All in the name of creativity and the chance to win Krispy Kreme gear and other goodies at the annual Moviefest. This year the mayhem has spread to an estimated 10,000 students at eight Georgia campuses where filmmaking teams are competing to win roundtrip plane tickets in the expanded Delta Campus Moviefest. In addition to Emory, students at University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Clark Atlanta University and Oxford, Agnes Scott, Spelman and Morehouse Colleges are documenting, creating and spoofing their way to an Oscar-style festival April 19 at Atlanta's historic Fox Theatre.

Staggered by campus through March, students get a week to shoot and edit their five-minute films, and there is a splashy event at each campus, complete with red carpet and skytracker lights, to showcase the finalists. The winner from each campus competition goes on to the Fox Theatre event.

Emory alumnus David Roemer started the festival as a student in 2001, and even produced a similar festival last year at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, during a postgraduate year there as one of Emory's four Bobby Jones Scholars. The Scotland experience spurred him to expand beyond Emory because 85 teams of some 1,500 students took part at St. Andrews. So, along with a six fellow Emory alumni, he has formed the company Ideas United LLC to expand and promote the festival. The event has proved to be a great way to build school spirit and foster collaboration.

"My experience at St. Andrews really proved to me that students universally have something to say and film provides a great platform," says Roemer.

For more details on the festival and to watch past winning films, go to www.campusmoviefest.com and then stay tuned for April 19, when the envelope is opened, and the winner is….