FILMMAKER WINS PRIZE ALUMNA OF CALARTS HONORED.

Byline: Naush Boghossian Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - When Jen Sachs' backpack was stolen eight years ago during a cross-country train trip, she didn't know it was a blessing in disguise.

She lost her diary, story ideas, memories and sketches. She was left clutching a true-crime novel - about dead bodies being transferred in trunks via train - she had picked up in Florida to read on the ride.

But that book turned out to be more valuable than the items she lost.

Sachs has won a Student Academy Award for her animated documentary ``The Velvet Tigress'' based on the book - Janna Bommersbach's ``The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd: The Truth About an American Crime Legend Revealed at Last.''

``All I had left was the book,'' said Sachs, 26, who worked on the film while a graduate student at the California Institute of the Arts' experimental animation program. ``I thought it was a sign that it would make a good project since all the other ideas were taken from me.''

Sachs is one of 11 students from eight universities in the country to be selected as winners in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' 29th Annual Student Academy Award competition.

Students find out June 9 if they will receive a gold ($5,000), silver ($3,000) or bronze ($2,000) medal at the awards presentation ceremony at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

Her 11-minute film is about the trial of Winnie Ruth Judd who got off a train from Phoenix at a station in Los Angeles in the fall of 1931 with two trunks. A baggage agent noticed a liquid leaking from one and a foul odor emanating from both.

The bodies of two Phoenix women were found inside. After a sensational trial, Judd was convicted of killing one of the women.

She was sentenced to death, but later was declared insane and was sentence to life at the Arizona State Hospital. She was freed in 1971 and died in Phoenix in 1998 at the age of 93.

``The Velvet Tigress,'' chronicles the sensationalistic media coverage of the 1931 Winnie Ruth Judd ``Trunk Murders'' trial by combining drawn animation, live action and digital collage.

``This was at the height of yellow journalism - a point in this country's history where the media was taking trials and turning them into spectacles,'' she said.

Fascinated by the media's role in the trial's progression, Sachs spent about 1 1/2 years researching the coverage in newspapers. While reading, Sachs discovered that advertising in many ways illustrated what the trial's happenings.

``They were film noir characters before film noir,'' Sachs said. ``The way the media portrayed these people flattened them into stereotypes and jeopardized any chance Winnie had of getting a fair trial.''

When prosecutors claimed that Winnie killed her two best friends out of jealousy because they were more beautiful and popular, the newspapers started running a column dedicated to beauty pageants on the same page as the trial coverage, Sachs noted.

The winner of the beauty pageant was announced at the same time that the trial reached its climax.

After researching the case, Sachs spent two years animating from storyboard to film, creating a film that touched on what Sachs felt were important themes - gender and class.

``The issue of gender is important, and the trial really brought up a lot of issues about where a woman's place is,'' Sachs said. ``Only men were allowed to judge her. That was not a jury of her peers.''

Sachs has started animating a small documentary of the first solo female pilot, Sophie Blanchard, and is researching six other cases like the Judd trial - and is considering one day proposing it as a series.

Sachs, who graduated with a master's degree in Fine Arts from CalArts last May now works at Intralink Film Graphic Design in West Los Angeles in the motion graphics department, which creates advertising for films.

She has already won several honors in different competitions, and with ``The Velvet Tigress'' touring at four film festivals, Sachs says she's happily surprised that her documentary is reaching a wide audience.

``I feel great about winning the award,'' Sachs said. ``But, it tells me that I was successful in communicating a message to the audience.''

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

(color) Jen Sachs, a former CalArts film student, won a prize for her film, ``The Velvet Tigress.''

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer