Several SVA students and alumni have received industry recognition for their short films:

• Dustin Grella (MFA 2009 Computer Art) is one of the 37 student finalists in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 37th Annual Student Academy Awards competition. Grella’s film Prayers for Peace is a narrative stop-motion animation about the artist’s younger brother, who was killed in Iraq.
• Ross Bollinger, a current student in the BFA Film, Video and Animation Department, was named the first-place winner in the Animation category of the 31st Annual College Television Awards for his work Hook, Line, and Stinker, a series of comedic vignettes about fisherman that appear to created by a moving pencil.
• Mark Kendall, a current student in the MFA Social Documentary Film Department, is earning praise for his short documentary film The Time Machine. It was selected as the Best Documentary Short of the 2010 Arizona International Film Festival, received the Grand Jury Award for Best Student Film in the Washington DC Independent Film Festival and won Best Student Film in the West Chester Film Festival. The Time Machine is a portrait of Wil Alvarez, a man who came to the U.S. from Honduras 11 years ago and now works as a watchmaker in New York City’s Grand Central Station.
• Jake Armstrong (BFA 2009 Animation) animation The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9! will be part of Best of Ottawa 2009, a series of screenings  from the Ottawa International Animation Festival that will travel through Canada and the United States through July 2010. Armstrong’s animation is also an Official Selection in the Graduation Films category of the Annecy International Animated Film Festival 2010, which will take place June 9 – 11.

Image: Dustin Grella, still from Prayers for Peace, 2009.