The winners of an international competition organized by Penn State for new plant-biology videos on YouTube were announced May 15. More than $8,000 in cash prizes were awarded in this first competition organized by ChloroFilms, a nonprofit collaborative project started by Daniel Cosgrove, the Eberly Professor of Biology at Penn State. ChloroFilms promotes the creation of fresh, attention-getting, and informative videos about plant life. The winning videos, as well as all the contest entries, are on the ChloroFilms Web site at http://www.chlorofilms.org/
The Grand Prize winner, Ela Lamblin of Vashon, Washington, will receive the $1,000 cash prize for his entry titled "Fertile Eyes." The video, a collaboration with Anna Edlund of Spelman College, combines music, dance, sensual imagery, and puns to tell the story of pollination and fertilization in plants in an unforgettable way.
First prizes, each of $500 in cash, go to: Daniel von Wangenheim of Cologne, Germany, for his entry "Fantastic Vesicle Traffic, to Kris Holmes of Rochester, N.Y. for her entry "La Bloomba," to Burkhard Schulz of Purdue University for his production "PSI -- Are My Soybeans Wearing Different Genes?" and to Mike Wilder of Portland, Ore., for his video series "The Carnivorous Syndrome in 3D." In addition, CholorFilms awarded 15 second prizes of $250 each and 16 honorable mentions of $100 each.
ChloroFilms is a nonprofit collaborative project started by Cosgrove at Penn State with initial funding from the Education Foundation of the American Society of Plant Biologists and additional support from the Botanical Society of America and the Canadian Botanical Association. With the help of volunteers at colleges and universities around the globe, ChloroFilms is working to combine video, Internet and social-networking technologies to promote a greater appreciation and understanding of plant life and to make the best plant-biology videos easy to find from its Web site at http://www.chlorofilms.org.