59TH ANNUAL FILM FESTIVAL WILL UNSPOOL MARCH 31 – APRIL 7

Students from the Kanbar Institute of Film & Television Compete for Over $50,000 in Prizes and A Hollywood Showcase

6 Sundance Entries Among This Year’s Films

New York University’s 59th annual showcase of student films—First Run Film Festival 2001—will take place March 31 through April 7 with a competition of film and video shorts and over $50,000 in cash awards to be presented by the Charles and Lucille King Family Foundation and Lew and Edie Wasserman. New York Magazine, once again, will sponsor the opening ceremony and screenings as well as give two awards of its own. The films were all written and directed by graduate and undergraduate students in the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Among the 106 short films and videos in the weeklong showcase are six 2001 Sundance Film Festival entries: Because of Mama, by Serguei Bassine; Baby, by Bridget Bedard; Helicopter, which is also a 2000 Student Academy Award Gold Medal winner, by Ari Gold; 3D, by Pete Chatmon; Paté, by Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo; and Goulash, by Mimi Zora.

First Run Film Festival 2001 officially opens with the Dean’s Craft Awards ceremony and announcement of the Wasserman Award finalists on Friday, March 30 at 6:00 pm in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Film Center, located at 36 East 8th Street. Public screenings at the Cantor Film Center begin on Saturday, March 31 and run through Friday, April 6; screening times are daily at 5:30, 7:00 and 8:30 pm. Admission is $5; NYU students with ID, $3. No tickets will be sold in advance. For further information, call (212) 998-1795; or visit the web site at www.nyu.edu/tisch/filmtv.

The week of screenings culminates in the Wasserman Awards ceremony on Saturday, April 7, at 6:00 pm in Alice Tully Hall, located at Lincoln Center. Tickets will be sold in advance and are $5; NYU students with ID, $3. For tickets, telephone (212) 875-5050. Twenty Wasserman Award finalist films will be screened in Hollywood in June.

Underwriting support for the First Run Film Festival has been provided, in part, by a grant from the Charles and Lucille King Family Foundation for the creation of 10 awards. They are, for both graduate and undergraduate divisions: 1st place, $10,000; 2nd place, $7,000; and 3rd place, $5,000. In addition, four Wasserman Awards for $2,500 each and underwritten, in part, by the King Family Foundation, will be presented for Best Director and Best Screenplay. These last awards honor Lew and Edie Wasserman, generous benefactors of the Tisch School. A distinguished panel of judges representing the film industry will select the winners.

For the first time, the festival has also received support from the following major sponsors: Armani Exchange, Evian, The Sports Club/LA, USA Films and Verizon.

First Run is the debut event for most NYU student films, and many will later go on to screenings at international film festivals, cable television and Sundance. This year’s entries range from traditional dramas and documentaries to experimental shorts and animation. Most are fifteen minutes or more in length and were shot in 16-mm color. Coming-of-age stories chronicling the misadventures of youth and relationship-driven dramas predominate as well as fantastical and comedic approaches to slice-of –life stories.

The Kanbar Institute of Film and Television at the Tisch School of the Arts provides an intensive and professional education in filmmaking. The program shared first place in recent U.S. News and World Report rankings of the nation’s film programs; since 1992, twelve Student Academy Award gold medals have been presented to NYU student filmmakers by the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences. At the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, NYU students and alumni walked away with an unprecedented seven awards in virtually every top-prize category. And at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival nine films by NYU students and alumni won 10 out of the 18 awards. Approximately 150 graduate and 1,050 undergraduate film students pursue degrees in film and television production, photography, cinema studies, dramatic writing, and interactive telecommunications. Distinguished alumni of the Tisch School of the Arts include Alec Baldwin, Joel Coen, Chris Columbus, Billy Crystal, Martha Coolidge, Ernest Dickerson, Amy Heckerling, Jim Jarmusch, Ang Lee, Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, and Oliver Stone, among many others.

03/22/01