In recent weeks, the submission period for the Academy Student Awards, the Oscars for film students, has remained open. These awards are aimed at the participation of film schools worldwide. In addition to the prestige they bring, both for the award-winning directors and for the film schools, they are one of the routes to the Short Film Oscars.
Until now, the call for schools outside the United States was restricted only to those that were part of CILECT, the International Association of Film and Television Schools. Spain is one of the European countries with the most members; we have four full members. This meant that only a few student short films could participate per country.
But this year the rules have changed, and they have opened participation to other schools, with the sole condition of having been selected at 3 festivals from a published list on the Academy website, which you can also download from this link. This list is made up of a mix of the fiction, animation and documentary lists that already exist for the Short Film Oscars. This procedure ensures that the works that can be submitted meet a minimum quality standard and, above all, represents an opening of these awards to more schools and more students.
Participation in these festivals must be in competitive sections. To prove it, it is enough to send the links to the festivals’ websites where they have been selected. The maximum duration must not exceed 40 min., submissions are open until next June 1, and they are made through the Filmfreeway platform. You can consult the full rules at this link.
The rules for these awards are now structured in three parts: U.S. schools, schools that are part of CILECT, and those short films that have successfully screened at festivals and have achieved three selections.
These changes, together with those we already learned about in February for the Short Film Oscars, with new festivals to access the Oscars, go in the same direction: they expand and increase submission opportunities. These are changes that favour the participation of short films that previously could not access them, enriching and raising the quality of these awards.
By contrast, in our country, the opposite is happening: the changes we have experienced in the Goya Awards have been based on a very different concept: restricting and closing off the possibility of participation for many short films. It is true that the rules for these awards should try to ensure that only the highest-quality short films are submitted, but by adding and increasing options, not by subtracting and creating more and more restrictions.
All of us must help new creators, welcome them with open arms and support them, and the Film Academy should be the first to do so, both through the Goyas and through specific actions, as other academies do. In addition to the Oscars, there are student awards at the Los Angeles BAFTAs, as I mentioned last week. The future of cinema, of the Goyas and of the Academy itself is at stake: if there are no new generations to take over, there is no future.
There is little time left for the new rules for the Goya Awards to be published; it is time to take measures to remove some of the new restrictions that were created last year. I hope these changes are made from a position of openness, adding and opening up new possibilities for participation.
If you are currently distributing a short film made within a film school, review the Academy Student Awards rules carefully and the festivals where you have participated; you may be lucky and be able to compete for a Student Oscar.