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Today marks the deadline for budding filmmakers at UC Berkeley to submit their 5-minutes-or-less short to Campus MovieFest.

If you haven't heard about it, Campus Movie Fest is the largest student film festival IN THE WORLD. It all started about 7 years ago at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. A group of friends gave computers, camcorders and "training" to a bunch of students, had them make little shorts and then shared them with each other. Now a bunch of schools across the country are given Apple laptops equipped with iMovie and FinalCut Pro, digital camcorders and tripods, cell phones and 1 week to produce a short film about anything they want.

Winners get a shit load of prizes. And yeah, winning shit is cool, but what's even cooler about all this, is that thousands and thousands of original ideas get put out to the public. Stories get told. People get entertained. And no back-door deals, Hollywood budgets or politics are involved or necessary.

It's nice to get reminded, every once in a while, that creativity still exists and there are people out there who care enough to get it out there in the world. (Of course, PianoFight included.... by the way, have we mentioned our next wildly hilarious and entertaining and original and genius show is coming up this weekend? yup, thats right... get your tickets NOW and see you there)