Posted Thursday, Feb. 16, 2006, The OG, student awards

Subfreshman Michelle Wong has earned first place in the grades 6-8 category of the Insect Fear Film Festival Art Contest. She will receive her prize this Saturday at 6 p.m. at Foellinger Auditorium, site of the festival.

Prizes will be awarded by May Berenbaum, head of the University of Illinois entomology department, founder of the IFFF, and a Uni parent.

Wong's artwork, as well as the entries from other Uni and area students, will be on display at Foellinger during the festival. This year's theme is praying mantises (mantids). Any art incorporating insects was acceptable.

“Michelle's entry was a beautiful color pencil rendering of a butterfly over a collaged background,” said her art teacher, Lisa Evans.

The IFFF, sponsored by the Entomology Graduate Student Association, has been a campus tradition since 1984. The feature film this year is “Deadly Mantis,” a 1957 movie about a prehistoric giant praying mantis that attacks North America. Its original tagline was, “This was the day that engulfed the world in terror!”

The festival gets under way at 7 p.m. The rest of the lineup consists of:

• an eight-minute digital animation called “The Mantis Parable,” created by Josh Staub, chief art director of Cyan, the company behind the computer games “Myst” and “Riven”;

• a four-minute Chinese paper-cut animation called “Mantis Stalks Cicada”;

• a 15-minute episode of “Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast,” featuring Zorak, the show's resident giant alien mantis;

• an episode of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer,” in which a teacher turns out to be an evil mate-devouring mantid;

• instructional videos on praying-mantis style Shaolin kung-fu; at 6 p.m. on the Foellinger stage, martial-arts masters willl provide a live demonstration.

— Gargoyle staff