University of Central Florida (UCF) - Orlando, FL

Florida has more than a dozen film schools and the longest film festival in the country. What better place for Kodak to host a student film competition than during the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival? During this mini-festival within a festival, student films from around the world compete in all categories except for one: the Best Florida Student category, which is only open to schools in the Sunshine State.

	Tom Shaw, a Florida farmer and rancher and one of the brothers who owns Shaw and Shaw farms.

Katie Damien from the University of Central Florida won third place in this category for her documentary Cowmen, which chronicles the struggles of a family to continue to farm and raise cattle in a small Florida town.

"I would love to see Cowmen in schools," she said. "I believe the plight of the small American farmer is a subject that is often overlooked." Katie has already donated copies of Cowmen to the Orange County Regional History Center and the Alachua historical society.

"What is happening to the Shaw family is happening all over the United States and there are many contributing factors," said Katie. "Small farms especially cannot compete with larger farms and foreign markets. Beef imported from Mexico is much cheaper than U.S. beef. There are no regulations on what can be given to cattle in other countries and what kind of chemicals can be sprayed on crops."

Katie had grown up around the Shaw family in Alachua, Florida. When it came time to shoot a Western for her class assignment, the Shaws were there to help. "They loaned us a few horses and gathered up some of their friends to help move the cattle and hold them into position for us while we shot take after take," she recalled. "As I watched them, I thought wouldn't that make a great documentary, modern day cowboys in Florida, they won't be around much longer."

She shot the documentary by herself entirely on Mini DV with a Sony PD100 and edited the project as she went along. "I had a few advantages being out there on my own," she said. "The people I talked to were more comfortable when it was just me and my little camera. I was often invited to eat with them and one time I even rode with them as they drove cattle."

Her professor and mentor was Jonathan Mednick who passed away the summer after she finished editing the documentary. "I will never forget his advice: 'The people are what's important, tell their story and the rest will fall into place.' My documentary would not be what it is, without his support," she said. "Because I was shooting a documentary over the course of a year, I needed equipment longer and more often then most other students. All of my professors and the staff in the equipment room were very supportive."

Katie had chosen to attend UCF because her scholarship stipulated that she attend a school in Florida. "UCF seemed to me to be the best program at the time," she said. "There was an intimate class size of only 30 students per year, students retained all the rights to the films they made while in film school, and it was in Orlando, a town of movie production with studios and resources for filmmakers."

Katie graduated last December with a B.A. in film production and hopes to make a narrative feature film next. "I love to tell stories, especially fantastical fictional stories that take you into a different world," she said. "Cowmen was my first documentary. I would say that I prefer working on fiction, but really I just want to tell a good story, be it fact or fiction."