<p>For the fifth time in four years, a Student Academy Award has gone to a film written and directed by a student from Florida State University's renowned College of Motion Picture, Television and Recording Arts —best known as The Film School.</p>
<p>On June 7 at the 35th Annual Student Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, Calif., the silver medal in the Narrative category went to "The State of Sunshine," a short film written and directed by FSU alumnus Z. Eric Yang.</p>
<p>Created as Yang's student thesis film—he graduated from The Film School last August with a Master of Fine Arts degree—"The State of Sunshine" tells the fictional but all-too-familiar tale of two siblings who illegally enter Florida from China, and who cling to hope even though they must engage in prostitution to pay off their smugglers.</p>
<p>"The support I received from The Film School during the entire process was just tremendous," said Yang, 32, a native of Shanghai, China, who came to the United States in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in material sciences from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.</p>
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<p>While FSU's long-standing Student Academy Award-winning tradition makes earning them look easy, it's anything but, said Patterson. "We compete for those gold, silver and bronze medals against hundreds of other entries from dozens of other top film programs at private and public colleges and universities across North America, and the vast majority of those programs choose to enroll far more students than we do," he said.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, over the past decade work written, directed and produced by FSU Film School students has won a huge share of the film industry's top honors, including a host of College Television Awards and other national nods.</p>
<p>For the complete article see: FSU</a> News</p>