Flick Pick

The first of the University of Colorado Film Studies program’s Goldfarb and Grillo Awards — students will win $12,000 this academic year — will be presented this week at the fall Student Awards Showcase. The prizes, in the words of the presenters, “are designed to encourage excellence in filmmaking and help defray some of the expenses required to pursue a degree in film production.” Winning films and prize amounts have yet to be announced, but the winners’ showcase will be at 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday, September 9 and 10, in Muenzinger Auditorium on CU’s Boulder campus. Admission is free.

Since its quiet beginnings in the 1970s, Film Studies at the university has grown into a degree program boasting more than 600 current and former undergraduate majors. The awards, funded by a grant from the University of Colorado Foundation, are named in part for the film program’s founder and former chairman, Virgil Grillo, who died in 1994.