Their films “My Dear Arthur” and “The Exit” won two of the four Jury Awards during the CMF IU competition earlier this year. The Jury Award represents the top films on each campus.
Those films then have the opportunity to advance, competing at the national level in Los Angeles where they will be judged by leading film industry professionals.
Additionally, their third film, “ID,” is competing at the national level in the Elfenworks Social Justice category.
The festival began in 2001 and is the world’s largest student film festival with more than 500,000 students involved, according to the CMF website.
CMF challenges participants to create a five-minute film in one week. The Bevins sisters said the hardest part of the process was the editing phase.
“Filming is easy, if everything goes right, but editing is a bit time consuming and nothing is ever perfect,” Eli said in an email. “You know you have to tell your story in that time frame, and it has to be submitted on time or you’re out of luck.”
“My Dear Arthur” is a thriller about a painting used for witchcraft.
“As horror and thriller film lovers, we draw inspiration from horror films made in or before the 2000s,” Eli said . “We also use personal experiences, stories from other people’s experiences and our grandmother’s life teachings.”
On the other hand, “The Exit” features a drama about domestic violence and “ID” is a social justice film focused on prejudice and stereotypes.
Even though the sisters won first place in the Elfenworks Social Justice category for their film “Systematic Living” last year, they were unable to attend the event due to lack of funding.
However, this year both Bevins sisters graduated from the School of Informatics and Computing, earning a master’s degree in information science with a specialization in information architecture.
The School of Informatics and Computing, along with supporters who donated to their campaign, have helped fund the trip for the Bevins sisters to travel to California.
“We are more than grateful to have their support behind us,” Lu said . “Without (them), we would not be able to attend again this year.”
The Bevins sisters give credit to all of their supporters for voting for their films everyday if they are fortunate enough to win the CMF Western Digital Fan Choice Award of $10,000.
“If we were to win this award, we would invest in more film equipment so we can create a more cinematic look for our films,” Lu said. “We could possibly submit a film to the Sundance Festival.”
