Imagine this scene from the fictional film, "The Making of the Notre Dame Student Film Festival 2000":

Student filmmaker: (With impatience) Drop your shorts. And move your penis to the left. No, to the right.

Student actor: (With confident reserve) Okie-dokie. (Drops shorts, moves penis first to left, then to right).

Shocking? Yes.

Wrong? Some will say yes, but in the free spirit of academia, the answer must be no.

This is the type of question many will ask upon viewing of this weekend's installment of the student film festival. Though the festival has become a hot commodity around campus since its inception in 1990, this 2000 show comes with a snag, a point of interest, a selling point.

And it is sex.

Sex is what makes the world turn. It is what teenagers long for as they walk the halls of their high schools. It is what college students revel in as they become mature members of the adult world. It is what 20-somethings transform into love as they settle into permanent lives. It is what middle-aged people forget about. And it is what the elderly remember with fond, Viagra-induced splendor.

So this weekend, the folks in the Film, Television, and Theater department present 15 student films, all with their own message, all with their own perspectives concerning life in this crazy world. And with the noticeable stamp on all of the festival's advertisements, the one that screams "Strong Sexual Content (No one under 17 admitted)," sex will be on the minds of many attending the event.

But here's the catch. The "Strong Sexual Content" involved in the festival is not what many students might expect. It is different. It is course material. It was part of a grade. It was approved by faculty members. And most important, it is only a minor part of what makes up the 15 films.

And really, the variety of films presented is what the film festival is all about.

"It's like going to a pot-luck dinner or a buffet, where everybody brings something to the table that's a little bit different and unique," said Ted Mandell, associate professional specialist in the FTT department and supervising faculty on many of the student films. "I think that's what makes the film festival a lot of fun, is that you get different students from different halls on campus, and off campus, who have different views about different subjects. It's a mixed bag. You might be watching a serious film about the penis, and then you'd be watching a music video."

Aside from the diversity the festival brings to the table, another special part of the festival is the level of accomplishment surrounding this year's films.

"Comparing it to the other film festivals of the past, these films are more daring, more provocative, they're certainly more polished technically," said Mandell. "And I think that's something that we've seen as the years have gone, as the film program has progressed. The maturity of the students has gotten better, and the quality of the filmmaking has gotten better. This one, without question, is the most provocative."

Jill Godmilow, FTT professor and supervising faculty, adds that the students themselves have taken the student film genre to a new level this year.

"They take on the world," Godmilow said. "We're moving in that direction anyways, but they're not parodies or stuff that's on tv, which is very often what students make … smartass stuff. They're very original. They're taking on tough subjects."

A look at the student films to be shown indeed forces one to accept their originality. When it comes down to it, the film festival is geared as a forum for the thoughts of students to be on display. Not only is there a film about the penis ("A Woman's Guide to the Penis"), but there are films about the process by which people eat meat ("Hack and Grind"), young love at the roller skating rink ("Rollerskating Romance") and death and violence in cinema ("The Dying Soldier").

Claire Connelly, who with Sam Dobie made "The Dying Soldier" and "Rewriting History: The Conquest of AIDS," noted a measure of epiphany experienced by tackling some more serious issues.

"We were talking to a lot of AIDS patients, and it became way more personal than I thought," she said. "I realized I'm a very naïve Notre Dame student."

Disregarding the sexual nature of some of the other films, films like Connelly's and Dobie's also push the envelope in terms of what the audience expects from student films, and particularly student films at Notre Dame.

So really, the NC-17 rating, as Mandell calls it, takes into consideration the all-around adult nature of the topics addressed in all the student films.

But as anyone will admit, the most provocative film of the festival is probably "A Woman's Guide to the Penis." And the reasons for this are obvious.

"The point of the film is to take something that is generally taboo and controversial and to put it onto the screen in such a way that by the end of the film it is not that way," said Matt King, who made the film with Meredith Watt. "To put it on the screen and to have people just look and listen, and to by the end of the film to just be OK with it."

He later stated that "unless God does something, these things aren't going to change."

Of course, the questions remains: Will audiences be offended?

"When that first shot comes on the screen, there is going to be a reaction," said King. "But by the time the last few shots are on the screen, people will be expecting them and used to them. That was the point." But King adds that the aforementioned warning should allay any real offense from the audience.

Godmilow added that "you get to look at, for the first time in your life, 20 or 30 penises. They're not connected to people. Nobody's showing off. But there were that many male students that agreed to be filmed.

"It was a chance to see something that has been so veiled. So it's not sexy. It has nothing to do with sex. But it's going to appear to some people as an outrageous violation."

King also realized the subject of the film, the penis, is something America must learn to accept.

"When `Boogie Nights' came out, the only thing people who didn't see the movie knew about was that you got to see a penis in it," he said. Certainly, for those audience members at the Snite this weekend, a deeper understanding of the penis will be attained.

Though King asserts people shouldn't be offended by the film, the fact remains that the the film is being shown on a relatively conservative campus where censorship has found a home in various media organizations. Godmilow addressed this issue in terms of the film festival's history.

"I've been here eight years, and I've never heard from the administration, and I don't expect to hear from them this year," she said. "If a group of students went and got a bunch of porn films and showed them at Cushing, they'd come in heavy. But I respect that they know better than to try and determine or limit the content of especially something that professors are involved in.

"They are able to really run students' lives and program students lives. But if they want to be the great university that they desperately want to be — the University of Notre Dame sees itself as competitive with Yale, Princeton, Harvard, or wants to be competitive — it cannot be caught in censoring professors.

"So they work on students and they don't work on faculty. So I don't expect any trouble. That doesn't mean that somebody isn't going to leave the theater or Right Reason isn't going to go and see the show and write a letter to Malloy and say, `This is outrageous. This is a Catholic university. There were penises there.'"

Fortunately for Godmilow, as she mentioned, the content of student films has never required even a phone call. But she did wonder if this would be the year this changes.

Another important development concerning the NC-17 restriction being placed on the festival is the effect it will have on attendance. In the past, there hasn't been any trouble selling tickets. In fact, a second Monday screening was added this year to accommodate the demand for tickets.

The label "Strong Sexual Content" might make demand even stronger. But Mandell and Godmilow urge the community to understand the meaning of the restriction.

"That's not a ploy. It's not an advertising ploy," said Mandell. "It's just a warning."

Perhaps, even, it will change the stigma attached to the film festival as a festival of laughs.

"There's the Notre Dame film festival problem: that all everyone wants to do is laugh," said Tony Fonseca, who made "Free: Short-haired, Male, Neutered" with Jonathan Adler. Fonseca was a bit cynical about the audience's reaction to the various films, but acknowledged his own thoughts concerning student filmmaking: "I'm not Steven Spielberg. I don't care if my film makes money. It's just cool."

But while Fonseca admits to being ambivalent toward his audience, King submits to the fact that student filmmakers cannot escape all having to do with the Notre Dame community.

"The fact remains that they're all made at Notre Dame, and that can have an effect on it," he said. "It was made totally for Notre Dame students and made totally under the Notre Dame umbrella."

Still, the film festival is the best opportunity to allow these film students to show off their work. And by doing this, they are able to offer the blood, sweat and tears they let out throughout the last two semesters.

"What our students find out is they learn a lot about themselves in the process of making these films," said Mandell. "These films are incredibly personal projects. It takes a lot of guts and a lot of self-sacrifice: a) to pull it off, and b) to be willing to show it in front of 2000 people."

Essentially, it is the exchange of content between the filmmakers and the audience that makes or breaks the festival. And that can cause for a nerve-wracking experience on the part of the filmmaker.

"My films have never been shown to more than three or four people," said Connelly. "I am a little nervous."

• ... the Student