The third annual 50/50 Comedy Fest, a one-night short film festival aimed at young filmmakers, will be held on May 4 at 6 p.m. The four-hour event will feature six different short films.
According to the founder and CEO of the film festival, Luke Steinfeld, a USC alum, 115 people are expected to attend. This year, in particular, there was more interest than ever before, with over 400 submissions.
“I’m very, very pumped for this one. I think every year it’s like adding a brick on top of another one,” Steinfeld said. “We get a little bit better at it every year, because you do it enough, and you’re like, well, last year this went wrong, let’s try to fix that.”
Many people have been able to return to 50/50 over the years. Zach Shenouda’s, a senior majoring in film production, film “Adulting” was shown at last year’s film festival. This year, his film “Airplane Food” will be shown.
“I would say the benefit of 50/50 is just being like a smaller community separates itself,” Shenouda said. “Sometimes the bigger festivals have so much going on and so many people and so many films playing that it’s hard to connect with everybody.”
The festival didn’t always look like this. The 50/50 Comedy Festival started out as a sketch festival, akin to Saturday Night Live, before it became focused on short films.
The first festival only had 50 attendees, who were mainly students from USC or CAA interns, but Steinfeld was encouraged by that response to expand the festival. He originally created the festival after seeing a screening of USC thesis films and wondered what that would look like if it were just focused on comedy.
“I was just super inspired by not only the talent and USC film school as a whole, but just the idea of celebrating young filmmakers,” Steinfeld said.
Maria Paula Quesada, a USC alum who graduated in 2023, is the producer and founder of the film production company Odd One Out Films. The company focuses on stories by young filmmakers. Quesada is the writer, director, actor and producer of the film “Happy, Happy Birthday” that will be played at the festival.
While this is the first year that her film will be shown at the festival, she was involved when it originated, as Steinfeld originally reached out to her to spread the word about the festival.
“50/50 particularly really puts an effort into having the filmmakers be able to take something out of it and exposing them to people in the industry that can really help out.” Quesada said. “It’s so, so valuable as a young filmmaker, and it also just opens people’s eyes to younger talent, indie filmmaking, and it’s just a great way to show a lot of indie work at once and have people look at the variety of work and voices that are out there.”
And in addition to the comedy festival, 50/50 has also hosted a horror festival for the last two Octobers. Steinfeld and his co-founder, Michael Sunkin, another USC alum, created the horror festival because they wanted to expand, and thought it would be interesting if it was in a genre completely opposite to comedy.
“Comedy and horror are looked at as complete polar opposites, and we were thinking it could be really fun to do a scary Halloween-esque themed festival in October and have a comedy, kind of this summery vibe in May,” Stenfeld said. “But what’s funny is the two genres are very similar. Comedy is just a setup and a punchline, and horror is a setup and a jump scare.”
While for now, the 50/50 film festival plans to stay as a one-day film festival for both the comedy and horror festivals, that may change in the future.
“I definitely do really enjoy the one night, four hour event, just because I like to be hyper aware of everyone’s time in the audience,” Steinfeld said. “But we’re definitely having conversations about making it a longer event...[there’s] different ideas floating around.”
Overall, the festival aims to be an engaging and intimate opportunity for aspiring filmmakers to showcase their talent and network with industry professionals. This year, the festival will be held at The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in West Hollywood, about 10 miles from campus. It starts at 6 p.m. and will run until 10 p.m. Tickets cost $27.50 and can be purchased here.