FILMMAKERS VIE FOR CASH, KUDOS AND (INDUSTRY) CONTACTS AT FIRST RUN FESTIVAL 2000

richard.pierce@nyu.edu

Entries Compete for Over $50,000 in Charles and Lucille King Family Foundation Prizes and a Hollywood Showcase

2 Sundance Winners Will Be Featured in the Week-long Event

New York Magazine is Sponsor of Opening Ceremony and Screenings

Entries in New York University’s First Run Festival 2000, the annual showcase of student films, will compete for a record number of awards and the largest cash jackpot in its history—10 awards and an unprecedented $54,500 in cash—when it gets underway later this month. New York Magazine will sponsor the opening ceremony and screenings. The weeklong event will also feature 2000 Sundance winners Friday and Five Feet High and Rising among the over 120 short films and videos, totaling nearly 30 hours. 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.

The 58th Annual First Run Festival opens with the Dean’s Craft Awards ceremony and announcement of the Wasserman Award finalists on Friday, March 24 at 6:00 pm in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Film Center, located at 36 East 8th Street. Screenings at the Cantor Film Center begin on Saturday, March 25 and run through Friday, March 31; screening times are daily at 5:30, 7:30 and 9:30 pm, with additional weekend showings at 1:30 and 3:30 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 1, 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. Telephone (212) 875-5050. The seventeen Wasserman Award finalists will have their films screened in Hollywood in June.

Additional support for the Festival has been provided by a special underwriting grant in celebration of the millennium year from the Charles and Lucille King Family Foundation for the creation of 10 generous Millennium 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 special “Wasserman Awards in 2000” prizes, underwritten, in part, by the King Family Foundation, will be presented for Best Director and Best Screenplay, each for $2,500. 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.

NYU graduates dominated the Sundance Film Festival this year. Nine films by graduates won 10 honors out of a total of 18 award categories. The two Sundance-winning films in First Run will be given places of honor: opening the Festival will be Friday, directed by Jodi Gibson (1999 graduate alumna), which received an honorable mention at Sundance; Five Feet High and Rising, directed by Peter Sollett (1999 undergraduate alumnus), which won the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking, will close the week-long series.

First Run is the debut event for most NYU student films, and many will then 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 2000 Sundance Film Festival, NYU students and alumni walked away with an unprecedented ten honors in eighteen award categories. 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.

03/06/00