After a two-year hiatus, the world’s largest student film festival, Campus MovieFest (CMF), returned to CSU East Bay and gave 133 students the opportunity to produce their own award winning film in just one week.

“At CMF, we don’t reject any films. All types and levels of quality are accepted as long as they follow our rules and guidelines,” said Nishant Gogna, CMF’s promotion manager for their northern California Tour. “We provide students with everything they need, including an Apple MacBook with Adobe Creative Suite 6, a Panasonic HD camera, 1,100 license-free songs, a microphone, a tri-pod and technical support throughout the week.”

From Oct. 10 to Oct. 22, students created films like “Wavelength”, an artistic look at the negative stigmas of discrimination, “Infatuacion”, a girl’s pain after professing her love to her best girl friend, and “Overseas Outlanders”, which shows how truly connected the world really is.

“I really liked the film “Day Dream.” It was kind of similar to our movie. There was a guy haunting someone. I like that suspenseful kind of movie,” said CSUEB student Justin Nunez, photographer of the film Translucent.

At the end of the week, students frantically put the finishing touches on their films and turned them in along with their equipment. From there, students, faculty and staff judged the films and chose the Top 16 films, which were then showcased at the red carpet finale.

“Judges’ scores were based on a number of criteria, including technical excellence, development of story and character, and the overall impact of the film,” said Gogna. “Fifty percent of filmmakers that sign up for CMF are first-time filmmakers,” added Gogna.

The award for Best Picture, went to the film “Translucent”, created by CSUEB students, Justin Nunez, Joshua Folsom, Tyler Green and Yolta Ito. The suspenseful film focuses on the eerie feelings that come with being on the CSUEB campus after hours.

“We were really psyched about our idea and were really happy about our results,” said Nunez. “We didn’t think it would become this big of a deal, but turns out everyone loved it.”

The award for Best Drama went to the film documentary “girl+truck+dog,” created by CSUEB student Jaime Niedermeier, which focused on a working college student’s struggle with homelessness after her sudden divorce.

The award for Best Comedy went to the film “Statuesque” by Peter Simms, which features two statues in a museum having a conversation about their job.

These top three award-winning films will be screened at CMF’s national event, CMF Hollywood in June 2013, where “Translucent” could potentially screen at Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France. Along with a trip to Hollywood, the creators of “Translucent” also received a one-year membership to Adobe Creative Cloud, which includes access to all of Adobe’s products including Adobe Creative Suite 6.

Awards for Best Actor and Actress went to Tyler Green for Translucent and Genesis deLuna for Infactacion, while The Silver Tri-Pod Award went to Wavelengths for their soundtrack and Translucent for their cinematography.

Besides winning t-shirts, equipment and cash, girl+truck+dog and Statuesque also were given the opportunity to get paid gigs.

In their 12 year history, CMF has traveled to over 70 major college campuses across the country and around the world to give students the opportunity to make their voices heard through short films.