For the forlorn souls walking through the Stony Brook Campus, deprived of stimulation and entertainment, the Staller Center for the Arts brings a Film Festival. The 11th annual Stony Brook Film Festival begins on July 20 and lasts until July 29. Alan Alda, of M*A*S*H fame and one of the premier figures at the concurrently-occurring Southampton Writers Conference, will also make an appearance at the Festival.
Stony Brook’s Center for Wine, Food, and Culture kicks off the Festival with Italian and Italian-American wines and foods. The Festival even features three Italian films in celebration of New Italian Cinema. These will be showcased in collaboration with the Suffolk County Film Commission, and Gioacchino Balducci, film commissioner and professor of Italian and Film Studies at Stony Brook.
Some of the Independent films and shorts being screened are premiering at Stony Brook even before they are released in the fall. But food, drinks and films is not all there is to the Festival. The Festival also features a panel of experts on ‘Film Production and Distribution of Independent American and Foreign Films.’ Panelists include Rebecca Conget, the Vice President of Theatrical Distribution, New Yorker Films; Stuart Strutin, President of Panorama Entertainment; Jason Leaf, Co-President of Avatar Films; and Michael Gunther, President of Triboro Pictures. If that fails to suffice, there will also be an informal seminar-‘Making an Anti-Hollywood Movie for Under $40 Grant’-lead by John Putch, famed actor and director from Pursuit of Happiness.
The Festival opens on Thursday night with Heaven’s Fall, the newest film by Terry Green, a 2002 Grand Prize Winner. The next nine days feature Independent films, which will be followed by shorts. July 22 offers a chance to mingle with the renowned personalities at Jasmine, Wang Center, featuring an Asian Buffet. The Festival ends with an Awards Night that will reward the 14 films and 14 shorts, through a Jury and an Audience Choice Award.
Individual tickets are available for sale, as is a $55 10-day pass that includes the films, the panel, the seminar and ‘An Evening with Alan Alda.’
