A / NEWS / MONDAY, MARCH 14, 2011 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
ARTS
'Poeta' wins film festival
CHRISTOPHER HONG chong@kansan.com
Student Union Activities (SUA) hosted its third annual International Film Festival this weekend at the Kansas Union and featured films from Mexico, France and Germany.
Students who attended got the opportunity to see awardwinning foreign films from the Guanajuato International Film Festival last summer.
"The festival is unique because it features a lot of international short films," said Bea Kilat, films and media coordinator for SUA.
The festival also hosted a competition for student film makers
teaturing a grand prize of $500 and a 10-day internship with Guanajuato International Film Festival. The competition had more than 30 entries this year. Films in the competition had to be made in the past year and had to be less than 15 minutes. On Sunday, SUA announced the winner of the competition, "Poeta" by Devin Schwyart.
Schwyhart, a senior from Winfield, said he had been making films since he was 12 years old and film had always been his obsession. After taking a hiatus from film making, he made the move to the department of film and media studies.
"I was a mechanics assistant
for an autoshop for two years," he said. "I kind of thought, I'm 23, its not going to come any sooner so I just need to go for it."
"Poeta" is a documentary about Stan Lombardo, a KU professor of classics who translates Greek epics into a 21st century context. Schwyhart said an internship with a film festival would give him the opportunity to make contacts in the film industry.
When asked what his plans were after graduation, Schwyhart gave a simple reply.
"I'm boarding the first flight to L.A.," he said.
Edited by Emily Soetaert
Springing ahead could be unhealthy
SCIENCE
MCCLATCHY TRIBUNE
HARTFORD. Conn. Researchers say that shifting our internal clocks twice a year might affect us adversely — from more traffic accidents to lower SAT scores.
One worry about daylight sizing time, which happened Sunday morning at 2 a.m., is sleep deprivation. When we spring forward, we lose one hour of sleep. That may not seem like much of a jolt, but studies suggest most of us don't get enough sleep as it is, so losing even an hour can take its toll.
The one-hour time shift also seems to wreak havoc with our
circadian rhythms, the 24-hour cycle our bodies are accustomed to. The cycle sets itself according to sunrise and sunset.
Daylight saving time was adopted in the United States in 1918, long before the medical community began looking into seasonal affective disorder — a feeling of depression and sluggishness that comes from the lack of exposure to sunlight.
Andrew Winokur, director of psychopharmacology at the University of Connecticut, said we thrive on consistent patterns.
"When there's a sudden change in that, we as humans can feel it," he said. "We get used to, and more comfortable, being on a
specific pattern, and when that changes, we're more likely to feel out of sorts than better. I would say it's slightly analogous to jet lag."
lag.
Of particular concern to Paul Desan at Yale University is how little we know about the long-term effects of seasonal affective disorder.
"In my opinion, the research is not very complete and is contradictory," said Desan, a professor of psychiatry who specializes in seasonal affective disorder. "We're doing this vast public experiment without knowing what we're doing."
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