The best of 2024 in film will be competing over the next several months in a bevy of awards shows, and although the official schedule is still a mystery due to the ongoing fires in Los Angeles County, Santa Monica College was able to benefit from the major show before the blazes.
This month, the Golden Globe Foundation announced it has given the Santa Monica College Foundation two grant awards for the college’s film production and journalism programs. The grants, which are made possible via revenue generated by licensing fees of the annual awards show, total $10,000 for journalism students and $35,000 for film production. The star-studded Globes took place Jan. 5 in Beverly Hills and live on CBS.
Student journalists working for The Corsair, a SMC tradition since 1929, are eligible for a piece of the $10,000 pie, which acts as a stipend for the work hours that could otherwise be spent at a full-time or part-time job. The $35,000 for film students is specifically earmarked for the film production capstone course, entitled “Making the Short Film.”
The Golden Globe Foundation, formerly known as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Foundation, has been working with SMC for several years now, with the organization’s support directly allowing the film program Capstone course.
“(We are) tremendously proud to support the award-winning Film Production and Journalism programs at Santa Monica College,” Golden Globe Foundation President Henri Arnaud said. “The training students receive at SMC and the work they produce year after year speak volumes to the potential of community college students who bring fresh perspectives, their diverse backgrounds, and unparalleled grit to the vital work of telling stories and bearing witness.”
The Capstone course has students working hands-on under guidance of faculty to produce a short film. Past films have been invited to lauded festivals like the Cannes Film Festival and Vienna Independent Film Festival. Publications have taken notice of the program as well, as Moviemaker Magazine listed the SMC program as one of the 30 best film schools in the United States and Canada in 2024.
As for the journalism program, The Corsair student paper has been around since 1929, an endeavor SMC Journalism and Media Studies professor Sharyn Obsatz calls a “First Amendment Paper” due to all decisions on content being made by student editors.
“They come to us for advice, but we don’t interfere on what they want to do,” Obsatz said. “We just kind of train them, and then they run it like it’s their own.”
Students who have contributed to The Corsair, are going for their Bachelor’s Degrees and have a financial need are eligible for the scholarship, something Obsatz says she knows “about what a difference it made” for recipients.
“I’m very thankful for it because I feel like there’s a lot of satisfaction … doing good journalism can be very satisfying,” she added. “It also can be very stressful, and so anything you can do to show them appreciation … I consider it. It’s a way to show appreciation to the students who are doing this important work on campus.”
