Film Student Swagger

Annie Silverstein's "Spark," which won the jury award for Best Texas Short at the 2012 South by Southwest Film Festival

A cancer-stricken dancer considers her mortality. An obese teenager pines for his old babysitter. A pint-sized adventurer fights alien baddies to the tune of a multi-instrumentalist cheer squad. These are the subjects (slash heroes) of three short films, and the films couldn't be less alike. What unites them is a consistency in excellence. Wondering how good the University of Texas's Radio-Television-Film school is these days? The proof's in an upcoming program – the second annual Longhorn Showcase – of nine superlative shorts by undergraduate and graduate student filmmakers. (Supporting evidence: Two of the directors, Huay-Bing Law and Micah Robert Barber, are newly minted Student Academy Award nominees; other students have taken their films far and wide on the festival circuit.) The lineup includes Chithra Jeyaram's "Mijo," a documentary portrait of choreographer and cancer survivor Sharon Marroquín (the subject of recent Chronicle cover story; see "Here Today ...," The Arts, March 23); Law's delicately wrought "Benny"; David Bukstein's music video for Mother Falcon, "Just To See Her Smile"; Evan Roberts' "33 Teeth" (see "Measuring Up," Jan. 13); Annie Silverstein's "Spark"; Barber's fablelike "Falconer"; Hammad Rizvi's "Road to Peshawar"; Elizabeth Walker's "Fotograf"; and Jono Foley's "Merman."

The Longhorn Showcase takes place Saturday, May 12, at McCullough Theatre, 2375 Robert Dedman Drive. The evening kicks off at 6pm with a reception, followed at 7pm by the screening, and an afterparty at 8:30pm. The event is free and open to the public.