On Thursday, Oct. 22 at 6:30 p.m., the International Student Association will sponsor a new event that has received film submissions from all over the world. The event will feature short films from the U.S., India, Spain and Sweden.

“We created it from scratch,” said Ines Galiano, graduate assistant and office manager in the Language and Culture Resource Center. “We created a website and said that we are accepting submissions. We didn’t expect really anything, but then we came back after summer and realized we had about 45 submissions from all over the world, it was really nice.”

According to Galiano, the ISA mission is to create a comfortable environment.

“A lot of these students don’t know anybody, they just come here and don’t have family or anyone to support them,” Galiano said. “We just wanted to help them and let them know we are here and in the same situation, we can help each other.”

This idea came about as Galiano and others brainstormed.

“We wanted to do something new and we came up with the idea of the film festival,” Galiano said.

This event was made possible by funding through the Buc fund.

“Since it’s a student film festival, we would like for these students to realize that they can do it,” Galiano said. “All the movies are made by students with a low budget. But, they get to see what other students are making and an be encouraged to do more.”

There are four categories of movies, animation, documentary, fiction and ETSU films.

“Students from other countries won’t be coming in for the festival because they are really far away,” Galiano said. “But, we have movies from Australia, Iran, Turkey and even Israel. I’m just happy the ETSU students get to see movies from all over.”

The movies will be divided into two slots.

“The first slot will be an hour of different movies,” Galiano said. “After that we will have a break with food, then the second slot is another hour with different movies, and after that we are holding a ceremony.”

Rewards will also be given out at the end of the festival.

“Our Radio, TV and film professor, Rusty Sheridan kindly agreed to help us judge the movies,” Galiano said. “Sheridan will be deciding who’s the winner. Then we are preparing trophies and some cash that we got from the admissions.”

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  • MC Kelly

    A native of Chattanooga, MC Kelly has been a staff writer and photographer for the East Tennessean for two and a half years. She is a journalism major with a minor in Photography who hopes to work as a freelance photographer after she graduates in May 2016. In addition to her passion for photography, she loves interacting with children and being outdoors. When she isn’t at the gym working out she can be found spending time with her two cats Mowgli and Scuddles.

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