Once again, two student films produced in the De Anza College Film/TV program have been selected for the Cinequest Film Festival.

Induri Meena’s “Final Performance,” an animation of an Elvis-like performer, and Omar Forero’s “Try,” an experimental film about a lost citizen, will compete among 17 films in the student shorts category at Cinequest, the San Jose film festival which was recently ranked as one of the top 10 festivals in the world by “The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide.”

De Anza has been the only community college represented in the Cinequest student shorts competition since the category was created at the festival in 2001. De Anza has been represented every year since 2002.

Last year, De Anza student Car Nazzal’s “The Truth of the Matter” and Michael Chance’s “The Reason” competed with shorts made at NYU, Columbia University and the Munich Film School.

“Year after year, the De Anza student shorts competed against those produced in prestigious four-year and graduate film programs from across the globe, and I really think they’ve held their own,” said film theory instructor Susan Tavernetti, who has served two tours at Cinequest in 1998 and 2007.

The playing field to get into a festival is tougher than it’s ever been. More filmmakers are making films that end up in film festivals than has ever been the case, said Dennis Irwin, who teaches the 16mm filmmaking classes in which festival selected films are often produced.

Omar Forero’s “Try” has already entered a number of festivals such as the aluCine Toronto Latin@ Media Festival in 2007. Forero is currently in Peru planning a feature film project about two women who get jobs as door-to-door saleswomen.

Induri Meena’s “Final Performance” played to much applause at De Anza’s student film festival last April. Meena lives in San Jose and continues to attend animation classes at De Anza.

Former student Kurt Robert Kuenne, who attended De Anza College over a decade ago and transferred to the USC School of Cinema, will also see his films in competition at Cinequest this year. Kuenne wrote, directed and produced a 95 minute documentary, “Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father,” about the murder of Kuenne’s life-long friend, Andrew Bagby, by Bagby’s girlfriend. His narrative short “The Phone Book” will play in the shorts competition program.

2008 marks Cinequest’s 18th anniversary. It will run from Feb. 27 to March 9.

The annual Silicon Valley festival calls itself “a discovery festival of films and technology forums.”

Ehssan Barkeshli is the News Editor for La Voz.