This weekend, Columbia’s third annual Valentine’s Day Film Festival will have a lineup that caters to the town’s single residents.

The festival, put on by the MU Film Production Club and emceed by Comedy Wars, will feature films made by students at MU, Stephens College and Columbia College.

And the films, each about eight to nine minutes long, won’t necessarily have the theme of love, MUFPC president Charley Field says.

“The Valentine’s Day aspect is more because of when it is,” Field says. “We didn’t really have a theme. We’ve kind of opened it up to all genres.”

The best of the films will also be honored in an award ceremony, with awards such as best director, best technical achievement, best actor and best screenplay, at the end. A panel of film experts assembled by the MUFPC’s adviser, Brian Maurer, will also be present to enlighten curious, aspiring filmmakers.

Field says the six-person panel will feature people with industry connections, such as professors from Stephens College and other professionals whom Maurer is acquainted with.

This year’s Valentine’s Day Film Festival, although called the third, is actually only the second, Field says.

Due to complications, the festival did not take place last year.

“Last year we tried to have a festival, and we had like five submissions total,” MUFPC secretary Sam Roth says. “This year we had over four hours of submitted footage. So the success definitely went up this year.”

In 2012, the year before, the first film festival also had a different format.

“It started off with collecting scripts (all on the theme of love),” Field says.

Participants then sent them to the festival’s organizers, and then people signed up to be directors. Field says directors were randomly paired with scripts and had a casting call for actors and technicians.

“Part of the (first) festival was actually helping these people make these films that they were just given,” Field says. “On one hand, it was really cool to allow people to put together films, but it was a lot of energy, and they ran into a lot of issues doing it that way. So this year, instead of having that aspect we were involved in, we would just collect submissions.”

Roth submitted three films to the festival this year.

“One was a two-minute short about that childhood paranoia of stepping on sidewalk cracks,” Roth said. “The second one was a horror short that was six minutes, and the third one is like an action-comedy that plays as a parody of action movie clichés.”

Roth says all three were projects he had done for class.

“I felt like those were the strongest things I’ve done in the past year,” he says. “And our team members decided it was something we should put in.”

Another feature of the event is the emceeing by Comedy Wars, who also hosted the event in 2012.

Junior member Clint Cannon says the comedy troupe is interested in the MUFPC’s event because the groups are both performance arts.

“Our goal is to entertain the audience to get a message out,” Cannon says. “Their goal is to make a film that’s really going to resonate with an audience as well, whether it’s comedic or not. I think we kind of respect in each other the desire to make an audience feel something. So we’re really pumped to just help out and get to see all the films.”

The lineup will begin at 1 p.m. Sunday in Jesse Wrench Auditorium.