Most of our students have heard the rumors: Biola Film Festival isn't happening this year. None of us wanted to believe it, but at this point it's true. Unless we're able to establish funding and a working relationship with the Cinema & Media Arts faculty, one of our most important community events will pass away.

Every year, the Film Festival presents the only times for most film students to see their work on a large screen. Showcasing your work to a live audience is an invaluable, invigorating, and revealing experience as a filmmaker. It’s one thing to get a decent grade on a project in class, but an entirely different feeling to have relative strangers react to your work. We know first-hand how those trials have helped ourselves and others in confirming God’s calling for our lives to continue telling stories that matter. This is also our community's only widely-celebrated opportunity to see work outside of class projects. Just as it’s important to see what’s in theaters and festivals, it’s important for us to see what types of stories our peers are telling. It provides tangible ways of orienting ourselves to what our neighbors can and are trying to do, and it provides examples to underclassmen of what they can strive for and push beyond. Some of the best student work comes out of passion projects outside of class and these would otherwise go unnoticed by our own department.

We appreciate all the work the office is doing to provide outward opportunities for students with events like PitchFest and First Look, but we strongly petition the department to consider the needs and health of our entire beloved community and celebrate our work at home.

As a solution to this, we ask the School of Cinema and Media Arts to fund only the off-campus portion of the festival showcasing the nominees in all categories to allow us time and space to witness our peers’ work. We also request assistance in coordinating the selection and judging of submissions as has been customary before and appropriate prizes/scholarships for the high-school category winners. An SGA proposal has also been prepared and will be presented to the Biola Student Government Senate to seek the remaining financial help in funding the on-campus award show, including catering services before the event to function as a mixer for the film-making community.



A team of willing and able students has already begun planning the event in anticipation of our chance to bring the festival back, we only ask for the financial and networking assistance we need in order to showcase your work in the greatest light.



Make your voice heard! We desire a creative outlet for the projects you’ve poured our funds, blood, sweat, tears, minds, and souls into, and this has been our most open and inviting source to do so. Share this petition, see how you can help coordinate the event if possible, and bring back the Biola Film Festival 2020.