Office of Undergraduate Education

It’s an accepted fact around campus that Duke students can sell Duke best–whether it’s to the media or for admissions. Dan Piech, T ‘09, took his Duke-love one step further and created a Duke infomercial for his senior capstone project. After his final product was posted on YouTube, several Duke administrators came across the informative and edgy piece. Admins were so impressed that the piece was edited down to become Duke’s official thirty-second commercial spot.

You can read more about Dan’s transformation from student-filmmaker to university marketer in this Duke news article:

http://news.duke.edu/2009/09/tvspot.html

Cannes is an exotic locale on the French Riviera, but assuredly some of Duke’s globally-inclined students and alumni have been through la petite ville du mer which Brad Pitt (who is there promoting his new Quentin Tarantino film) today referred to as the “Holy Land of Film.”  I only know of one Duke person, though, who can say that he is in film Mecca right now–’09 graduate Lawrence Chen.  His  film “Journey to the West,”  recently earned him a spot at the Short Film Corner of the 62nd Cannes festival,  He plans on taking lessons learned at Cannes into a career in film-making either here or in his native China.  If you want to learn more about Chen or experience the festival digitally,  Chen, who received support to attend from the Office of theVice Provost for the Arts and the Dean/Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, is cataloging his trip via a blog on the Duke Arts site.

Click here to watch a trailer and vote on the movie!

The other day I was forwarded an e-mail from Christina Pogoloff, an instructor in the Writing Program, praising the work of her former student.  The student, Gwendolyn Oxenham( T’04) has been filming a documentary, called Footplay, on impromptu soccer matches around the globe.  The documentary is now in a competition with nine other films.  Check Footplay and vote–she needs 10,000 votes, so hurry!  Also check out Duke Magazine on her work below:

Gwendolyn Oxenham and Luke Boughen have played pickup soccer with inmates in the San Pedro Prison in La Paz, Bolivia.They’ve suited up against Iraqi expats in London, run with teenage soccer nuts in Marseilles, and competed in an Arab-versus-Israeli game in a park outside Jerusalem’s Old City.

Both former varsity soccer players—Oxenham at Duke, and Boughen at Notre Dame—they’ve spent much of the last year traveling the world in search of a good game, and capturing it all on film for a documentary-in-the-works tentatively titled The Soccer Project. (more…)

Two Duke students are just clicks away from snagging a free trip to Los Angeles to cover the Academy Awards. David Distenfeld, a junior from Maryland, and Lawrence Chen, a senior from Beijing – both budding film directors — have produced a video that has captured one of 10 semi-finalist spots in mtvU’s first-ever “Oscar Correspondent Contest” for college journalists. (more…)