Students packed Christendom’s St. Kilian’s Café this past weekend for the college’s annual film competition, featuring student-made short films inspired by specific decades in movie history. Organized by the college’s Student Life Office, the competition gave students the opportunity to express their moviemaking talents to the college community, resulting in creative and innovative films.
The film competition, which is part of the larger campus-wide competition called “Dorm Wars,” brings together some of the college’s most creative minds to write, shoot, act out, and edit a short film in a limited amount of time. This year, students had to make their film in the style of a specific decade, adding an extra layer of difficulty to the project.
The winning team, the “Bootleggers,” took their assigned decade — the 1920s — and explored creative new territory with it, making their three-minute short a silent film, in the vein of classic Charlie Chaplin movies. The movie, named “Two Gentlemen of Virginia,” utilizes on-campus locations, costumes, and clever editing to give it the look and feel of a 1920s film.
While Christendom’s liberal arts curriculum does not include a degree in the performing arts, the college offers numerous opportunities for students to express their talent and creativity for the good of the entire college community each year. The film competition is one of the most popular of these opportunities for students, with past winners, including “Pirates of the Shenandoah” and “The Literature Games,” still garnering acclaim from current students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
Watch these past two winners below.