Royal Television Society announces best student films of the year

Undergraduate students from the Arts University Bournemouth picked up three awards at the Royal Television Society's Student Television Awards 2017. 

Bleach, created by Jesse Lewis-Reece, Ike Newman and Ania Polewiak, took the Judge's Award and the Undergraduate Drama Award. Jacob Gerrard took home the Undergraduate Craft Skills - Camerawork prize for his role in the same project.

The piece was described as “grounded realist filmmaking, tackling an important issue in an ambitious and unexpected way, with a refreshing lightness of touch and some very raw, authentic performances”.

Global collaboration for film and media students

Jennifer Henry from the University of Salford won the Undergraduate News category for her film Life as a Refugee. The judges said that it managed to “to explain in a simple and understandable way a range of issues involved in one of the most important and complicated topics of our time - migration”.

National Film and Television School students took home seven of the nine postgraduate awards. These included Postgraduate Comedy and Entertainment, Postgraduate Drama, Postgraduate Craft Skills for Camerawork, Production Design and Sound Postgraduate Factual and Postgraduate Craft Skills - Editing. 

These were awarded for a number of different projects created by the postgraduate students. 

The Postgraduate Animation Award went to Josh Saunders at the Royal College of Art for his film The Grey Hound, while Kit Bradshaw and Rosalind Church from City University London picked up the Postgraduate News trophy for their documentary The Naked Truth: Britain's Cyber Sperm Donors.

The Awards, set up by the Royal Television Society, recognise the best audiovisual work created by undergraduate and postgraduate students across the UK and the Republic of Ireland. The full list of winners can be found here.