Filmmakers and moviegoers gathered Saturday in the Armory to watch more than 20 films screened by the Illini Independent Film Festival, organized and judged by the students of MACS 464, Film Festivals.

A total of 21 films from all over the country were shown at the festival sponsored by the College of Media, The Art Theater and Indi Go Artist Co-Op, a company that provides space for artists.

Screened films ranged from two-minute animated shorts to a feature-length romantic comedy. The class originally received 40 submissions, but only half made the cut for the final schedule.

“We were able to have enough submissions to actually have standards,” said Esther Hwang, member of the press relations group and sophomore in LAS.

“Dancing Shoes,” a two-minute comedy directed by Dillon Hanley, Jim Joyce, Aaron Weiss and Dan Winslow, won the IIFF Best Film Award and received a $75 prize.

“It made people laugh the most, and it was pretty well put together for a short film,” said James Easterling, member of the steering group and junior in Media. “It was simple enough to get, and the class voted on it as a whole.”

The film also won the Illini Award for Best UIUC Student Film, and the directors received seven tickets to The Art Theater in downtown Champaign.

“We wanted to highlight the fact that we are a student-run film festival, and we do appreciate student filmmakers,” Easterling said.

The 75-minute feature length film, “Xu’s Little Lover,” was directed by and starred Kunyang He. The Chinese foreign language film won the IIFF Award for Cinematic Excellence, and He received a $50 prize.

“I try to convey my strange type of obsessive humor in this type of film,” He said. “The film was made locally. The whole crew, actors and actresses were UI students.”

The films were separated into four blocks with specific themes: provoke, disorient, amuse and captivate. Each block contained five films, and “Xu’s Little Lover” was presented between the disorient and amuse blocks.

Of all the films presented at the festival, “Small Victories and Disappointments,” a pilot for a puppet sitcom, was the only film labeled “for mature audiences only” for its use of “drinking, drug use and lewd content involving puppets,” said Zach Harris, co-director and puppeteer of the film.

Harris, a graduate from Full Sail University in Winter Park, Fla., also directed four other films that were presented at the festival.

“I figured it was a good opportunity to get stuff shown,” Harris said. “I’ve been trying to get a lot of these films shown at a festival for a while, so it’s nice to finally get them up there. It’s nice to finally get a reaction.”

Jacqui can be reached at [email protected].