The glitz and glamour of Hollywood was transplanted to the Shapiro Campus Center atrium Monday night, when the second SunDeis Film Festival concluded with a red-carpet awards ceremony honoring the best achievements in student filmmaking screened during the three-day event. The evening recognized films in 12 categories and featured a keynote address by television producer Stan Brooks '79, a professor at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles who has also worked on a number of films including Rain Man.

The event was emceed by Joshua Gondelman '07, and the undergraduate ensemble Top Score-stationed above the atrium on the second floor balcony-performed brief selections from the scores to Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, West Side Story and other films throughout the evening. They performed a larger suite from Forrest Gump toward the end of the ceremony.

Commitment, a film by Boston University student Stefan Glidden, won the Best in Show award, the festival's final and most prestigious award.

"BU doesn't have an open film festival," he told the Justice after the ceremony, explaining that his school usually only honors graduate filmmakers. "It's very nice that ... Brandeis has a festival like this for everybody."

Brandeis students were nominated in all 12 categories. Arnon Shorr's '05 That Old Silent Film won for Best Short Film, and Duncan Watt, who conducted its soundtrack, won for Best Score. Shorr won for Best Actor in a Comedic Role for his performance in the same film.

Seth Bernstein's '06 The Not So Silent Generation, a film about the 1969 takeover of Ford Hall by black students, won the award for Best Documentary. He noted in his acceptance speech that the Shapiro Campus Center was built where Ford Hall once stood.

Eric Strauss' '05 Window Shopping won the Best of Brandeis award.

"I did the whole thing myself, and it wasn't meant to be anything professional or something like that," Strauss said of the featurette, which was comprised of vignettes detailing his exploration of life in Barcelona.

The evening began with a monologue by Gondelman, in which he screened a short absurdist film, The Silent Assassin. He joked that SunDeis had rejected the film.

"My mom told me it was my Citizen Kane," he quipped.

Brooks gave the keynote address about halfway through the ceremony. Directing his comments toward aspiring filmmakers, he discussed the importance of liberal arts educations to the film industry, maintaining that Brandeis does not need to offer a film major.

"You can do it," he said. "It can happen to you because it happened to me.