The MU Film Club will present The Green Globes, a short film festival with an awards ceremony at 7 p.m. April 21 on Commons’ Field for and by Marshall students.

The club is now taking short film and music video submissions via Dropbox, and the deadline to submit is April 1. Marshall students must be involved with the creation, production or performance of the film they submit and can submit up to two films, but their submissions cannot be longer than 25 minutes singular or combined. Marshall students only will be eligible for awards as well.

The film club is accepting submissions of short narrative films, documentaries and music videos. They will be awarding 17 students for their work, with such categories as best film, best actor, best cinematography, best director and best production design.

Chase Jarrell, vice president of MU Film Club, said that he hopes their film festival will be different because of the awards aspect and their inclusion of music videos.

“Music videos aren’t really seen in short film festivals, and there’s a very large community of students here who not only make music but make music videos,” Jarrell, junior secondary education major, said. “They don’t really have a medium to promote their music videos. This is going to be a great opportunity for students to not only put themselves out there but have a resume, because when you win an award, you have that to say it happened.”

Last semester, the MU Film Club created their own short film called “Pure.” Now, they are working on another short film titled “Licorice,” a docudrama based on the 2014 Charleston, West Virginia chemical spill. Jarrell said it is a more dramatic retelling of the actual events that occurred, but it is not a strict documentary.

“With a documentary, we could be as realistic as possible, but that’s not really the point of our club,” Jarrell said. “While we do support documentary filmmaking, the current members are more for the entertainment side.”

Similar to their first short film, MU Film Club members are responsible for the writing, directing, acting and production of “Licorice.”

They screened “Pure” last semester to an audience of about 70 Marshall students, and they are going to screen their newest film sometime this semester as well once it is finished.

Jason Lambert, president of the MU Film Club, recreated the group last year, because the original group members had graduated. He contacted the advisor, Walter Squire, and asked if he could revamp the organization and recruit new members.

“I came here fall 2016, and I’ve always liked movies, so I thought when I get to college, I’ll broaden my horizons; I’ll find people who like movies as much as I do,” Lambert said. “It’s changed a lot since then, but that was the inspiration, like a ‘Why not?’ If no one’s going to do it, then I will.”

One thing the MU Film Club stresses is they want to differentiate from the film studies program at Marshall. The film studies program also sponsors a short film festival, but Jarrell and Lambert said they hope theirs will be different.

“We wanted to give a chance to show what students around here have made separately from just the film studies program,” Lambert said. “We want to give awards away too to filmmakers, especially smaller filmmakers, because there’s a reward in getting rewarded for what you do.”

The MU Film Club also welcomes anyone, Jarrell said.

“We’re not just a bunch of people sitting around saying, ‘Hey, we like movies,’” Jarrell said.” “A lot of us, myself and the president included, we’re not film minors, we’re not video production majors. We do have members that are video production majors, but most of our executives and most of our members still are just people interested in the art of the film, as a hobby or a general interest.”

The MU Film Club meets at 7 p.m. every Monday and Thursday in Harris Hall Room 102.

Amanda Larch can be contacted at [email protected].