The Big Muddy Film Festival will be kickstarting its 20th year of screening independent films tonight, but as a completely student-run event, financing for the festival does not allow for any extravagant celebrations.

With a limited budget, there’s only so much we can do, festival co-director Robert Pickering said. In terms of the viewing, we weren’t able to bring back any of the past filmmakers or do anything special in that event except recognize the fact that we’ve been around 20 years.

But money has never been a major factor for the Big Muddy, which is the longest running student-run film festival in the country, mainly because the spirit of the festival has been to provide a sanctuary for fans of independent films who could not see the movies elsewhere.

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There was no showcase for independent work for a fairly large area. People either had to go to St. Louis which didn’t have much to see at the time or Memphis which also didn’t really have much, said Mike Covell, a cinema and photography professor and one of the festival’s founding students. The closest place to see independent films was Chicago, and that was a six hour drive.

In its first year, the Big Muddy received 45 entries, and the films were placed into four content categories:narrative, documentary, animation and experimental. Students flocked to the Student Center Auditorium that year for the screenings and continued to do so in the following years.

For the first five years of the festival, only 16-mm films were accepted for viewing and competition, but as the interest in video began to grow the festival also accepted films from video artists.

As the festival began to gain recognition in the independent film world and expand its capacity for movie format, the number of entries increased from about 50 entries its first year to as many as 250.

This year the festival received 191 entries and from those 70 films have been chosen for viewing in the Student Center Auditorium, University Museum Auditorium, the Longbranch Coffee House, Pinch Penny Pub and Tres Hombres Restaurant.

The movies chosen at each festival are judged by three visiting jurors who are also involved in making movies either with video or film. Past judges have included such well-known independent filmmakers as SIUC alumnus Steve James, whose direction on the documentary Hoop Dreams made it one of the most critically acclaimed movies in 1994, Jim Jarmusch (Night On Earth) and Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool).

Though well-known judges have been invited in the past, executive director of Film Alternatives Ben Nemenoff, a junior in cinema and photography from Peoria, said the students at Big Muddy just look for judges that can effectively rate the films through their knowledge of independent films.

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We don’t necessarily look for judges that have made it in the industry, he said. We look for judges that are kind of diverse and can look at an experimental, narrative, documentary or animated film and judge it without any bias.

The judges and the films to be viewed have been decided entirely by the students involved with the Big Muddy for the past 20 years. But one thing that is not totally up to the students is how much money will be available to keep the festival running year after year.

Though the Cinema and Photography Department helps the Big Muddy out with equipment and space, Covell said the University should get more involved because of the success of the Big Muddy over the years.

If you look at the overall budget of the festival, which is closely associated with the University, my guess is that 85 to 90 percent of it comes from sources other than the University, he said. The festival has brought a lot of recognition to this University. It would be nice if the administration was more attentive and more supportive of it because it has certainly brought a lot of national and international visibility to the University.

Nemenoff said that recognition is coming from the filmmakers that have been involved with the Big Muddy in the past as well as some of the popular films that have been shown through the years.

Last year a movie we had Breathing Lessons actually won an Oscar. Stuff like that is really important because it gets the festival noted, he said. It’s also gotten a national reputation through word of mouth. I mean, it’s been around for 20 years and there’s people all over the world submitting movies to it.

FACTOID:The Big Muddy Film Festival begins 7 p.m. Friday in the Student Center Auditorium with a screening of In the Company of Men. A full schedule with times, dates, films and venues of the Big Muddy will appear on page XX.