Craft Awards & King Finalists Announcement, April 7
First Run Festival 2006, the Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television’s annual spring showcase for intermediate and advance student projects in film, video, and animation at New York University, will offer public screenings April 8-15, 2006. This year, 111 projects will compete for over $50,000 in cash awards presented by the Charles and Lucille King Family Foundation. The films and videos were all written, directed and shot by graduate and undergraduate students in the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
The week-long festival will kick off with the Craft Awards ceremony and announcement of the King finalists on Friday, April 7 at 6:30 pm followed by a reception at Apple Restaurant, 17 Waverly Place. Public screenings of the films will be at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Film Center, located at 36 East 8th Street. Screening times are: Saturday, April 8 & Sunday, April 9 - 12:30 pm, 2 pm, 3:30 pm, 5 pm, 6:30 pm, 8 pm; Monday, April 10 - Friday, April 14 - 5 pm, 6:30 pm, 8 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 www.filmtv.tisch.nyu.edu.
Traditionally, the week of screenings culminates in the Wasserman Award ceremony featuring the presentation of the Charles and Lucille King Family Foundation prizes, which will be held this year on Saturday, April 15 at 5 p.m. in the Rosenthal Pavilion, 10th floor of NYU’s Kimmel Center for Student Life, located at Washington Square South and LaGuradia Place. A dinner will follow the awards ceremony. (The ceremony and dinner are by invitation only.)
Each year, following the First Run Festival the King finalist films and videos are screened in Hollywood for industry professionals and the public. This year’s LA showcase will be held on May 23 at the Director’s Guild of America.
Underwriting support for the First Run Festival 2006 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; 3rd place, $5,000. In addition, four Wasserman Awards fro $2,500 each and underwritten, in part, by the King Family Foundation, will be presented for Best Director and Best Screenplay. A distinguished panel of judges representing the film industry will select the winners.
First Run is the debut venue 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 are finished in video format with others completed in 35-mm and 16-mm color. Coming of age stories chronicling the misadventures of youth and relationship-driven dramas predominate as well as 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, fifteen 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, Kanbar Institute students and alumni walked away with an unprecedented seven awards in virtually every top-prize category. And at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival Kanbar Institute graduates and faculty won nine out of the 19 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 Kanbar Institute include Joel Coen, Chris Columbus, Billy Crystal, Martha Coolidge, Ernest Dickerson, Amy Heckerling, Jim Jarmusch,Ang Lee, Spike Lee,Brett Ratner, Nancy Savoca, Martin Scorsese, Susan Seidelman, and Oliver Stone, among many others.