The Student Film Festival is this Friday at the Gonzales Auditorium in Liberal Arts Building room 108. The festival will showcase more then ten short films directed and filmed by Southern Miss students.
 

   The film festival gives film students a chance to showcase what they worked on during the last school year and show their movies to a public audience.
 

   “Most of us [students] have been working on these films since the fall semester. We shot all of the footage last semester and we have been editing them this semester,” Michael Williams, president of Southern Cinema at USM, said. “So, at least seven to eight months of work has gone into each of these short films.”
 

   There will be a diverse spectrum of genres represented at the Student Film Festival, displaying the range of talent in Southern Miss’ film department.

   Greg Thomas, 22, a senior film major from Madison, will show his short film “Moral Bond” at the film festival. The short film is the story of two friends who are rival hired killers. One of them kills the other’s boss’ son, leaving them forced to kill each other in order to survive.
  

Thomas shot the movie with 16mm film and has invested a lot of time and effort into the production, but his real dream is to act. Thomas has been interested in acting since high school and he spent his first two years at Southern Miss as a Theatre major.
 

   “I love the creative control I get while directing, but what most people seem to forget is the collaboration between the director, camera operators, and actors to make one creative vision,” Thomas said. “Whatever I am doing, all I really want to do is entertain the audience.”
 

   Karen Ballinger, 34, a senior film major from Pascagoula, will show her film “Dual for the Day”, which documents an epic game of Uno between two brides-to-be who want schedule their weddings on the same day. Whoever wins the game gets the special day. Ballinger says that directing a movie is a way for her to escape into another world where anything is possible.
 

   “I actually wrote a script while in high school and tried to film it with my friends, but we never finished. I’ve always loved acting and creating, so I got excited when I saw that USM offered a film program,” Ballinger said. “So, seventeen years later I am back at school and getting to direct.”
 

  The festival will begin at 7 p.m. and run until 9 p.m. Admission is free.