Published: April 2005
On the evening of March 18, 2005, while klieg light beams trailed across the sky above Corcoran Commons, the first annual Baldwin Awards, a program celebrating Boston College’s best student filmmakers, took place in the Heights Room. Modeled on the Oscars, the ceremony featured a live band, golden eagle statuettes, guest presenters, film clips of the nominees, a rented red carpet, acceptance speeches, and rim-shot supported jokes for which Heights columnists Kevin Allocca ’06 and Kevin Sawyer ’06 have been assigned the blame.
Open to all undergraduates and sponsored by @BC, the film studies program, and communication department, the Baldwins (named for the University’s eagle mascot) drew more than 150 entries in 13 categories, including Best Picture, Horror, Best Actor, Screenwriting, and Comedy. Film studies, English, and communication department faculty led the judging, while students voted online for the Viewer’s Choice Award. (The winner, by a landslide, was Skating on Thin Ice, the sketch comedy group Hello . . . Shovelhead!’s send-up of speed skating Olympian Apolo Anton Ono.) The student newspaper The Heights editorialized that the Baldwins were “exactly what was needed to thrust student film into the limelight on campus.”
