The much anticipated end of the spring semester screenings of student films offered from SF State’s Cinema Department continued Monday night on campus.

“It’s like offering your baby to the lions,” said Cinema senior Sean Christensen, 22, at the screening of the new crop of films made in the Social Justice Documentary and Visual Anthropology classes.

The August Coppola Theatre filled up with filmmakers, their subjects, friends, and families including a smattering of toddlers.

“With film, you are at the bottom of this 20-foot hole in the ground and you emerge two years later with something precious,” said student filmmaker Sean Christensen, 21, whose animated short “Ignorance is Bliss” was screened at the Cannes Film Festival last week.

For approximately fifteen minutes each, the nine films topics included Vietnamese American students’ connect and disconnect, female hip-hop community dance group “Sisterz of the Underground,” natural birth in “It’s my body, my baby, my birth” and the river delta that provides most of California drinking water in “The Break.”

“They were really compelling, each one was like a window into topics that aren’t mainstream and that makes them very inspirational,” said SF State Health Education instructor Ruth Cox.

“I believe in the power of film to transform attitudes,” Cox said.

“I thought they were fantastic,” said alumni Bonnie Zyilbergold, 27, who received her masters in Human Sexuality. “The one on transgender health care could be used in a healthcare practitioner setting and it is very much needed,” Zylbergold said about “Transforming Healthcare,” about the discrimination faced by transgender people seeking medical care.

“The one at stay at home Dads was really cute and it was very interesting to see their perspective, and the one about the femme dyke community also gave a very specific perspective,” Zylbergold said of films “Why not Dad” and “A Complicated Queerness.”

“I was really impressed by the skill of the students,” said Jenn Lee, 33. “I was really pleased to see diversity of interest in nontraditional communities,” Lee said.

Visual Anthropology instructor Peter Biella described the films’ purpose.

“To show the world as it is and how it might be,” Biella said to the audience.

Friday night, the Coppola Theater was again at full capacity, this time for the animation finals.

“Super Cartoons Forever” was a collection of SF State’s “most twisted minds and the world’s brightest and most innovative young animators” according to the poster.

“It was awesome. It’s my first time coming. I just joined the department and I thought there was a good breadth of work with a lot of traditional and mixed media,” said Matt Petyo, 26.

The night included work from animation classes of all levels that best exemplified the work of the department with the most anticipated pieces of the evening, the senior thesis films, left last.

“People used classical animation, 2-D, 3-D, illustration style of animation, one person did green screen compositing and one flash adobe that is usually used for the web but can be used for film,“ said Cinema major John Allerano, 22. “It’s basically like drawing on the computer.”

Kathleen Hayes, 19, Microbiology major, came to support friends in the department.

“I was really impressed by some of the graphics and the 3-D animation and especially by the ones that weren’t hand drawn. I really enjoyed all the different mediums used,“ Hayes said.

Of using one or multiple and advanced animation techniques, Arellano, who goes off to USC film school in the fall, said that it is all comes down to skill.

“You can choose one or ten if you know how to bring them all together, that’s the secret. There is no simple animation,” said Allerano.

“I thought they were well put together and individually well crafted. I liked “Toothpaste” and the duality between the stop motion and regular animation and the humor was really great,” said Kendyll Pappas, 21, a double major in Creative Writing and Art of Ijah Garfield’s piece.

Some pieces were amusing like “Love Hammock” by Andy George, a hand drawn piece that used digital photo brought to life by imaginative voiceovers from fellow students in the almost completely true story of his car being stolen.

Others thought-provoking, like Dave Newlands’ reflective “Away with Words,” that used still photography to show a young man encountering a barrage of talking advertisements come to life while traveling the city on Muni.

“It’s hard to describe because they are so different than films you see in a commercial theater. Every scene is really trying to stimulate you visually," said UC Berkeley student Daniel Wong, 21.

“Yes!” said Yi-Chia (Betty) Mu, 24, while raising her fist in front of her face in a reenactment of the feeling she got after the screening. Her hand drawn piece “The End,” evolved through three animation classes.

“It is my impression of the war itself, that nothing is gained, only death,” Mu said of the evocative story of a horse dying in the desert.

Another often mentioned standout of the night was Marlon Torres’ “The Crimes of Mr. Lowry,” the one animated film included in the Cinema Film Finals held earlier in the week.

“I was knocked to my knees, its was so exciting to see it,” Assistant Cinema Professor Pat Jackson said of Torres’ film that took four months to complete and was based on a dream that he styled to the 40s film noir style.

“It was shot on green screen with video,” Torres, 25, said before going on to list the many techniques used in the complicated production that resulted in the visually captivating black and white piece.

“I loved seeing it on the big screen, “said Torres, with a huge smile on his face after the screening. “That’s where it belongs.”

For more information on the SF State Cinema Department go to www.cinema.sfsu.edu