About the Festival
A Commitment to Quality
SunDeis is a unique festival. Since its origins, the festival has offered a level of programming usually restricted to international film festivals. Our seminars are led by the industry's top professionals, including award winning filmmakers, actors, academics, agents and executives. The awards ceremony is nothing short of a spectacle.
Despite its high quality of programming, the festival remains free and open to the public. SunDeis is easily accessible by public transportation and offers unlimited free parking. There are no lines to wait in, no reservation to be made and no tickets to buy. Patrons are free to enter and leave the events' proceedings at their leisure. All filmmakers and guest speakers participating in the festival are available for questions throughout the weekend.
SunDeis is a rare opportunity for students to take advantage of a great wealth of resources all offered under one roof at the same time.
The SunDeis Film Festival:
- offers a venue for the exhibition of student films
- gives students the opportunity to network
- brings students, faculty, industry professionals, patrons, vendors, journalists and artists together under one roof
- awards artistic achievement that would otherwise have gone unrecognized
- accepts submissions without a fee, encouraging the greatest range of entries
- accepts submissions without runtime or generic restrictions, encouraging the greatest range of entries
- gives local businesses the opportunity to advertise, support student film making and present their products and services to those that attend
- gives students the opportunity to learn about and purchase exciting film related products and services from local vendors and businesses
- creates a space for film education through lectures, panel discussions and presentations
- promotes film making as an art, business, and livelihood
- promotes and encourage film studies as an academic field
- celebrates the magic and power of cinema
Origins
SunDeis was conceived by students for students.
In the autumn of 2003, one Brandeis student imagined a film festival that would accept the kind of films he made: independent student films.
Since most students attending schools outside New York and Los Angeles have limited resources and few opportunities to network and to 'be discovered,' we felt that a special type of film festival was in order: one with no entry fee, open to all students, where all genres and runtimes would be considered for exhibition, nomination and awards.
SunDeis was pitched to the student theater manager who in turn contacted students in Brandeis' film community. Within days, a call for applications went out to form a board of founding chairs each to oversee a different aspect of the festival's planning. These students met every week, consulting both advisers from the film industry and the school's administration to find the best approach to running a successful festival.
Fund raising events, information sessions, volunteer meetings, brand management discussions, multimedia publicity campaigns and an integrated Web site all helped lay the groundwork for the first ever SunDeis Film Festival which was held April 17-19, 2004.