This past spring, two CCA alumni participated in cinema's most prestigious event, the Cannes International Film Festival in France, May 16–27.

Ignorance is Bliss, an animated short film by Miriam Wilson (Illustration 2005) and her production company, Animated State, was shown in the short film corner.

Juan Leguizamon (Graphic Design 2007), was on one of ten teams of students selected by Adobe to participate in the Reel Ideas Studio. In this annual competition, the teams go to Cannes and produce a documentary film during the festival. Leguizamon's work, titled Les Lumieres Brilliantes, received a distinguished documentary award. It can be viewed in the At the Theater section at Reel Ideas Studio.

CCA Graphic Design instructor Jim Kenney also attended the Cannes festival as a mentor for Adobe's Reel Ideas Studio.

Rob Epstein and Caveh Zahedi, both Graduate Program in Film faculty members, have recently received prestigious fellowships.

Rob Epstein, chair of the program, received a $35,000 Media Arts Fellowship funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as a $10,000 grant from the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund, for Howl, an animated documentary exploring Allen Ginsberg's groundbreaking 1955 Beat poem of the same name.

Caveh Zahedi has received a Rome Prize fellowship from the American Academy in Rome. Zahedi plans to use it to write a screenplay adaptation of Ulysses, James Joyce's epic work of experimental literature, in which an hour of screen time will be devoted to each of the book's 18 chapters.