It was like a scene right out of “A Bug’s Life” when hundreds of ants, cockroaches, beetles and butterflies invaded campus Feb. 26.
The 28th annual Insect Fear Film Festival was held Saturday night at Foellinger Auditorium. The theme for this year’s event was “Killer Wasps.”
Famously known for showing poorly-made movies, the festival screened two feature-length films: 1957’s “Monster from Green Hell” and 2005’s “Swarmed.”
The event, which originated in 1984, was founded by May Berenbaum, professor and head of the department of entomology. The festival is put on every year by graduate students from the department.
“It’s such a blast,” said Alan Yanahan, senior in LAS. “I love the terrible movies they play at the end of the night.”
Get The Daily Illini in your inbox!
A nationally recognized event, the festival mostly attracts residents and families from the local Champaign-Urbana area, but some guests traveled from as far as Indiana, Missouri and Ohio. Gordon Yang, line producer for “Swarmed” flew in from Toronto, Canada, to hold a Q & A session at the end of the screenings.
“Our kids look forward to this event every year,” said Elaine Rossman, Urbana resident. “This is the third festival we’ve been to.”
Doors opened at 6 p.m., where there was an array of activities for guests to take part in. Display cases of hundreds of preserved insects lined the front of the main lobby in the auditorium where guests took pictures and cringed at the sight of the insects.
“It’s amazing, the collection they have on display,” said Mark Cavallaro, Savoy resident. “My wife and I know they’re all dead, but we still get goose bumps at the sight of those giant beetles and wasps.”
A live petting zoo including velvet ants, death’s head cockroaches and other various insects was a popular attraction for many of the children.
“The petting zoo was my favorite,” said Samuel Parcell, a third-grader from Urbana. “I got to hold a big, disgusting cockroach.”
Jo-Anne Holley, graduate student in entomology, was one of the animal handlers of the night. Holley displayed a tomato hornworm and a Madagascar hissing cockroach on her arms.
“When I started studying insects at the age of nineteen, I was squeamish and screamed at the touch of them,” Holley said. “But now I’m so comfortable around them.”
Holley held a group of nervous-looking childrens’ attention as she described the nature of each insect.
“The Madagascar hissing cockroach is very comfortable around humans,” Holley explained.
Winners were announced for the annual Insect Art Contest, in which 136 students from local schools entered an original drawing of any insect they desired. Hyeon Sean Kang, junior at Champaign Central High School, won “Best in Show” for her artwork entitled “Panic, Itself.”
Other activities included insect face painting and a computer interactive activity called “Bugscope,” where guests could explore a world of insects through an online scanning electron microscope.
When the screening began at 7 p.m., Professor Berenbaum opened with a few facts about wasps.
“The largest wasp is the mammoth wasp, which can grow to about three-and-a-half inches long,” Berenbaum said. “The smallest are called fairy flies, which are smaller than a single-celled amoebae.”
When the screenings began, the movies garnered more laughs than screams from the audience.
“The movies are just … awful to say the least,” said Jeff Allan, Champaign resident. “The special effects are horrendous, but that’s why people love coming to this festival.”
