Columbia High School Program Alumnus Nominated for Two Oscars

School of Continuing Education, Jan 10 2013

Columbia University High School Program in Creative Writing alumnus and director Benh Zeitlin was nominated Thursday by the Motion Picture Academy for his work on the Oscar-nominated film "Beasts of the Southern Wild."

Zeitlin received nominations for directing and writing for the film's adapted screenplay, which he wrote with longtime friend Lucy Alibar. "Beasts" was also nominated for best film.

Zeitlin, 30, was born in New York City and raised in Sunnyside, Queens, and Hastings-on-Hudson. He reportedly began his career as a filmmaker at the tender age of 6 when he and a friend made a Batman movie. He continued making films as a child before attending the Columbia summer course in creative writing and subsequently Wesleyan University, where he majored in film.

"We are going absolutely crazy," Zeitlin told CNN Newsroom's Ashley Banfield in an interview this morning. "We're still shaking. Even though there was some talk about it, we are totally shocked. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing."

“Beasts of the Southern Wild,” which opened in the summer of 2012, features Oscar-nominated Quvenzhané Wallis, who plays a 6-year-old girl faced with her father's fading health and environmental changes that release an army of prehistoric creatures in her Delta-community of New Orleans.

The Columbia Summer High School Programs offers more than fifty pre-college academic programs in New York, Jordan and Barcelona for students entering grades 9 through 12 and freshman year of college. These include introductory and advanced workshop as well as master classes in creative writing.