Kimberly Risi, a recent graduate of UCA’s Digital Filmmaking program, was the winner of the Charles B. Pierce Best Arkansas Film Award at the 2012 Little Rock Film Festival.
Risi won the award for her 20-minute film, “The Man in the Moon.” The film is about an inmate, Dave, who is sentenced to work on the moon and finds a door where an old man, the “man in the moon,” lives.
“I’m very excited about winning the award,” she said. “It’s a big win for the UCA film department since the crew was made up of students. I was honored to just be nominated.”
“The Man in the Moon” was Risi’s Honors thesis project. She got the idea for the movie while doodling. One of her doodles was of a moon with a window in the center.
“I knew the man in the moon fable but never really thought about it until then,” she said. “Twenty-seven script drafts later and I had my story.”
The moonscape exteriors were shot in a rock quarry in Jonesboro, she said. Two additional sets were built at Stanley Russ Hall on the UCA campus. The university provided the students with equipment they needed in order to produce the film, which was completed in April.
“Over the course of the last four years, my projects have become more complex and I’ve become more confident in my work,” Risi said.
The films in this year’s Little Rock Film Festival were exceptional, Risi added.
“I was proud to screen with every Arkansas film this year,” she said. “Every year the line-up gets better and better. Also, nine films at the festival were UCA made, three of which were done by professors. It just shows that UCA is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the Arkansas film community.”