The Student Academy Awards is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' annual competition for college and university filmmakers. The awards were originally named the Student Film Awards and were first presented in 1973. Since 1975, the awards have been given annually, usually in June. The current name was adopted effective in 1991.
The awards offer prizes in four categories: alternative (experimental film), animation, documentary, and narrative. Gold, silver, and bronze awards may be given in each category, with accompanying cash grants of $5,000, $3,000, and $2,000, respectively, as of 2005. Since 1981, a separate award has been given annually to a student filmmaker from outside the United States.
Several award winners have gone on to significant achievement as filmmakers, including Robert Zemeckis, Bob Saget, Spike Lee, Trey Parker, and John Lasseter. Some of the award-winning student films have themselves been nominated for Academy Award in the short film categories, including Chicks in White Satin, The Janitor, Karl Hess: Toward Liberty, The Lunch Date, 9, Quiero ser (I Want to Be...), The Red Jacket, On the Line (Auf der Strecke), God of Love and The Confession.
To extend the impact and honor beyond the competition, a compilation presentation of the gold medal award-winning films is circulated each year free of charge to educational and non-profit organizations nationwide.
Famous quotes containing the words student and/or academy:
“A black sun has appeared in the sky of my motherland.”
—Wuer Kaixi, Chinese student leader. Quoted in Independent (London, June 29, 1989)
“I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike—and I don’t think there really is a distinction between the two—are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats. And that being the case, any human being, male or female, of whatever status, who has a voice of her or his own, is not going to be liked.”
—Harold Bloom (b. 1930)