News

By Noela Hueso

Five UCLA TFT graduate students have been named to Variety's "110 Students to Watch" in the trade publication's annual Education Impact Report, on newsstands Tuesday, April 28. Merlin Camozzi, Emma Kragen, Lucretia Stinnette, Beto Skubs and Gaia Violo were featured as those "who represent the future of film, media and entertainment."

The Students: (From left) Emma Kragen, Beto Skubs, Lucretia Stinnette, Merlin Camozzi and Gaia Violo

MFA director Camozzi was singled out for his Sprite Films Green Ribbon Award winning film What We Need, which became a national commercial for Sprite, as well as his work on an industrial film for Morgan Stanley and a scripted adventure pilot for the History Channel. MFA director Stinnette was noted for her Princess Grace Graduate Film Scholarship from the Princess Grace Foundation USA, for her film Quyen, which focuses on the experiences of a young Vietnamese woman in an arranged marriage in South Korea.

MFA screenwriter Skubs is a Fulbright scholar who is currently working with Sony's Crackle on a TV project. In his native Brazil, Skubs' award-winning screenplay Fade Out: Painless Suicide became a best-selling graphic novel, while his short film Viver Outra Vez was singled out by the Brazilian Film Academy for a grand prize nomination. MFA screenwriter Violo had the distinction of winning second place at the most recent Samuel Goldwyn Awards, and is another student working with Sony Crackle, as well as Sony, on two different TV projects.

MFA cinematographer Kragen returned in March from a 12-day expedition to Antarctica after being handpicked to be a part of explorer and environmentalist Robert Swan's International Antarctic Expedition 2015. During the voyage, she filmed a documentary showcasing the effects of global climate change. Kragen's second film is being produced by James Franco's Rabbit Bandini Prods. Additionally, she is the recipient of a Motion Picture Association of America Award.

Other universities with student representation on the Variety list include USC, Chapman, Loyola Marymount, CalArts, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Harvard and Yale, among others.

UCLA TFT was also featured in the trade's "40 Showbiz Programs" story, which highlighted "stellar schools" in the United States and abroad.

Posted: April 28, 2015