Tisch School of the Arts Asia

Basil Mironer, Tisch School of the Arts Asia M.F.A. Film '10, has won the Sonje Award at the 14th Pusan International Film Festival for his film Rare Fish. The award is given to the best Korean and Asian short films in Wide Angle section, to assist in producing another masterpiece by providing KRW 10,000,000 (approximately USD 8,580) to the winning director.

Congratulations Basil!

You can read more about other awards this film has won here, and a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film here.

Tisch Asia's Kenny Gee's 'Meat at Block 320' won the Voice Award at 5th Signapore Short Film Festival. 'Meat at Block 320' is "a post-apocalyptic vampire-zombie love story".

Congratulations Kenny!

We are currently featuring several short films from Tisch Asia film students on our Video Showcase page.

Tan Shijie's A Bright, Bright Afternoon

Featured are:

Tan Shijie's A Bright, Bright Afternoon
Stephanie Bousley's Shot
Eugene Koh's Solidity

Visit the Video Showcase here

Tisch Asia Cinematography faculty Bobby Bukoskwi’s work wins prize for Oren Moverman’s The Messenger.

Congratulations to Bobby and Oren!

From the AFP:

DEAUVILLE, France — The top prize at the 35th Deauville American Film Festival in France was Sunday awarded to "The Messenger", a movie directed by Oren Moverman about a soldier back from the Iraq war.

Judges gave the Grand Prize to the film which tells the tale of Sergeant Will Montgomery (played by Ben Foster), who is given a tough new job at home after coming back from the frontline.

On his return to the United States, the soldier is handed the task of breaking the news to families when their relatives are killed in combat.

The film revolves around the difficult relationship between Montgomery and the officer who is in charge of training him.

This year's festival in the Channel resort closed Sunday with the awards ceremony where the jury, chaired by "Amelie" director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, selected "The Messenger" from 11 feature-length films.

The festival aims to boost the fortunes of independent American cinema and most of the films shortlisted fell into this category.

"The Messenger", the first film directed by Moverman who was previously known as a screenwriter, also won the international critics' prize at Deauville.

The awards, which attract tens of thousands of film lovers each year, were this year attended by Hollywood stars Meryl Streep, Harrison Ford and Robin Wright Penn.

Tisch Asia Instructor Todd Solondz' latest film Life During Wartime won Best Screenplay at the 66t Venice International Film Festival.

Congratulations Todd!

Below is a full list of the winners:

Venezia 66
- Golden Lion for best film: Lebanon by Samuel MAOZ (Israel, France, Germany)
- Silver Lion for best director: Shirin NESHAT for the film Zanan Bedone Mardan (Women Without Men) (Germany, Austria, France)
- Special Jury Prize: Soul Kitchen by Fatih AKIN (Germany)
- Coppa Volpi for Best Actor: Colin FIRTH in the film A Single Man by Tom FORD (USA)
- Coppa Volpi for Best Actress: Ksenia RAPPOPORT in the film La doppia ora by Giuseppe CAPOTONDI (Italy)
- “Marcello Mastroianni” Award for Best New Young Actor or Actress: Jasmine TRINCAin the film Il grande sogno by Michele PLACIDO (Italy)
- "Osella" for Best Technical Contribution: Sylvie OLIVÉ for the film Mr. Nobody by Jaco VAN DORMAEL (France)
- "Osella" for Best Screenplay: Todd SOLONDZ for the film Life During Wartime by Todd SOLONDZ (USA)


Orizzonti
- Orizzonti Prize to Engkwentro by Pepe Diokno (Philippines)
- Orizzonti Prize for Best documentary to 1428 by DU Haibin (China)
- Special Mention to Aadmi ki aurat aur anya kahaniya (The Man’s Woman and Other Stories) by Amit Dutta (India)


Controcampo Italiano
Controcampo Italiano Prize to: Cosmonauta by Susanna NICCHIARELLI (Italy)
Kodak will offer to the awarded director 40,000 euros in negative film stock - 35 or 16mm, chosen by the winner - to shoot a new feature film.
- Special Mention: Negli occhi by Daniele ANZELLOTTI and Francesco DEL GROSSO (Italy)

Corto Cortissimo (Prizes awarded on 10th September 2009)
- Corto Cortissimo Lion for Best Short Film to Eersgeborene (First Born) by Etienne Kallos (South Africa, USA)
- Venice Nomination to the European Film Awards 2009 to Sinner by Meni Philip (Israel)
- Special Mention to Felicità by Salomé Aleksi (Georgia)


“Luigi De Laurentiis” Award for a Debut Film
- Lion of the Future – “Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film to Engkwentro by Pepe DIOKNO (Philippines) - ORIZZONTI
as well as a prize of 100,000 USD, donated by Filmauro, to be divided equally between director and producer

Persol 3-D Award for the Best 3-D Stereoscopic Film of the Year (Prize awarded on 11th September 2009)
- Persol 3-D Award: The Hole by Joe Dante (USA)

Jaeger-Le Coultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award
to Sylvester Stallone

Opening at IFC Center in New York This Week:

From Filmmaker Magazine:

A connoisseur of longing and remembrance who brings great sensitivity to each of his reflective fables, Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda should be better known in the States, as his films extend the tradition of world-class artists like Naruse and Ozu. Enthralled with the operation of memory and the impact of grief on the lives of everyday people, Kore-eda has created a body of work that’s as rich with feeling as it is modest in tone. In Maborosi (1995), Kore-eda told the story of a quietly devastated young widow struggling to move on after her husband commits suicide. He then departed from this film’s elegant compositions and moody, color-saturated production design to draw on the observational techniques he’d developed earlier in his career as a documentary filmmaker. After Life (1998), built around interviews he conducted with hundreds of participants, visits an institutional purgatory where the recently deceased are asked to choose a single recollection to relive for eternity as a film. Distance (2001) and Nobody Knows (2004) are both loosely based on high-profile news items: the emotional aftermath of the Aum Shinrikyo sarin-poisoning tragedy and the heartrending story of three school-age children who survived for 200 days in an apartment after being abandoned by their mother. Even Hana (2006), an Edo period piece, has none of the usual trappings of the jidai geki genre, instead emphasizing the gentle, domestic rituals of a reluctant samurai-turned-village teacher who elects not to avenge the murder of his father. Throughout these films, Kore-eda studiously avoids the pitfalls of cynicism and sentimentality, exploring the private worlds of vulnerable, emotionally complex people with extraordinary grace and subtlety.

Read More

Tisch Asia has a Vimeo Channel where you can see clips from student work. Below are two clips from the channel. You can view more at www.vimeo.com/groups/nyu.

Alexandria Trailer from Eric Elofson on Vimeo.

"Whenever You Want Me" from Mykwain Gainey on Vimeo.

Frank Rinaldi, Film Class of 2010, was recently awarded the Grand Jury Award for Best Short at the 2009 Slamdance Festival. Tisch Asia caught up with Frank to find out more.

Q. Tell us about the award you received. How did this happen?

A. Funny Guy was presented the Grand Jury Award for Best Experimental Short at the 2009 Slamdance Film Festival. There are Grand Jury Awards for best narrative feature, best feature documentary, best documentary short, etc. We won in the experimental category. I don't know how this happened.

Q. What is Funny Guy about? Tell us a little about what inspired you to create this project.

A. Funny Guy is a movie about the madness of trying too hard. Jamie Dent, the story's anti-hero, is a very lonely and confused young man. His social skills are beyond bad, and because of this he has no friends. He has no self-perspective, and instead of correcting his social inadequacies, he exacerbates them via his inappropriate efforts to gain the attention of others. Jamie has no social boundaries, and the harder he tries to make people laugh, the more people are repelled by him. Todd Solondz and his merciless critiques were the primary impetus for the project.

Q. Looking ahead to your third year of the program, what are you looking forward to?

A. I'd like my thesis project to be a cross-pollination of the run-and-gun aesthetic implemented on Funny Guy and the formal methodology applied to my second year film LOWbASiC (in theaters soon!). I have no idea how to do this, but it might be fun to try. I'm also looking forward to telling a story that can be articulated or represented as a differential calculus theorem, or an Ornette Coleman song.

Student short films from Tisch School of the Arts Asia will be screened at the 2009 Palm Springs International ShortFest on 23-29 June. News of the school's appearance at the film festival has sprung up in hollywoodreporter.com, indiewire.com, and The Desert Sun of Palm Springs.

Tisch Asia student films in the festival are The Smallest Cinema in the Universe by Uta Arning; Jonathan's Home by Nathanael Carton; Alexandria and Master of His Domain by Eric Elofson; Teleglobal Dreamin' by Eric Flanagan; Joyce Agape by Hsieh Chun-Yi; Intersection by Shivani Khattar; Rare Fish (Ikan Langka) by Basil Mironer; Godverdomme! by Rene Pannevis; Double Happiness by Jordan Schiele; Delilah, Before by Melanie Schiele; and Connections International by Putnam Trumbull.

New York University Tisch School of the Arts Asia invites you to the school's annual Film Marathon. This is a celebration of 10-minute short films that were written, directed and edited by second year graduate film students at Tisch School of the Arts Asia.

From love stories to tragedies, from family drama to films on gamblers, surfers and even Brendan Fraiser, a total of 30 films will be screened.

Date: Saturday, 2 May 2009

Time: 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. The first film will begin promptly at 11 a.m. Guests may arrive at their leisure throughout the day.

Venue: National Museum of Singapore, Cinematheque

93 Stamford Road Singapore 178897

Reservations are required. Please write to Juanita Rodrigo at juanita.rodrigo@nyu.edu by 29 April 2009. Please specify the number of tickets needed and the names of all guests attending with you.

Invited guests, students and faculty members were on campus for a double-bill screening of The Mudge Boy by Michael Burke, a faculty member from the graduate film and Gone Shopping by Wee Li-lin, a student from dramatic writing on 8 April 2009. Both screenings were followed by a Q&A with the respective directors of the films.

Viewers were curious how Li-lin managed a shoot in Mustafa, a popular 24-hour shopping mall in Singapore that is almost always crowded with people. Just before this screening, Gone Shopping premiered in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. This movie also took part in international film festivals in Hawaii, Puchon, Shanghai, Rome and Hong Kong. Li-lin shared her experience as both the writer and the director of this film and the challenges of working on this film.

The Mudge Boy tells the story of a sensitive boy growing up in a harsh rural environment. The movie is a remake of the short film Fishbelly White by Michael Burke who is an alumnus of Tisch School of the Arts and a faculty member in film at Tisch School of the Arts Asia. The Mudge Boy premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and in 2003 and 2004 it made the rounds at several gay and lesbian and independent film festivals around the United States. The Mudge Boy was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It won a Grand Jury Award LA Outfest.

Taiwanese-born cinematographer and Tisch School of the Arts alumnus Jong Lin was on campus 31 March - 4 April 2009 to conduct cinematography master classes for second year graduate film students at Tisch School of the Arts Asia. Best known for his work on many of Tisch School of the Arts alumnus and director Ang Lee’s early films, Jong has also worked with many of China’s most prominent directors as well as Mira Nair on Bend It Like Beckham.

Jong generously shared his wealth of knowledge on cinematography with second year graduate film students. Bend It Like Beckham was screened on campus, and afterwards Jong participated in a question and answer session.

“I think that Jong Lin has a thorough knowledge of the subject matter, I definitely picked up a lot from his master class,” said Putnam Trumbull, a second year film student.

Stephanie Bousley, also a second year film student, said Jong offered the students practical solutions in cinematography.

When Tisch School of the Arts Asia opened, so did a new series of traditions. Each February, first year graduate film students in Singapore and New York meet online for the first time to celebrate 20 of the best short silent (MOS) films made during the fall term. The Second Annual MOS Celebration, held 14 February 2009, is designed to foster collaboration between the artists on both campuses.

Top 20
Earlier in the year, students and faculty voted for the 10 best films from each campus to be screened during the celebration.

Gabrielle Demeestere (New York) The Last Cigarette
Nathanael Carton (Singapore) A Married Woman
James Edward Franco (New York) The Feast of Stephen
Kyle Haskett (Singapore) Dark Country
Ken Ing Kirsten Tan (New York) Cold Noodles
Jordan Schiele (Singapore) Prank
Brantley Jones (New York) Errands
Kenny Gee (Singapore) Meat at Block 320
Nikita Liamzine (New York) Product
Mary Beth Dickerson (Singapore) Embers
Shiva Bajpai (New York) The Singhs
Chun-Yi Hsieh (Singapore) Toy Man
Margaret Shin (New York) People Watching
Anya Hoerlein (Singapore) Anil Goes to Work
Michael Wood (New York) Around the Block
Shi Jie Tan (Singapore) A Bright Bright Afternoon
Hye Mee Na (New York) The Bag
Emmanuel Osei-kuffor (Singapore) When Doors Open
Jose Angel Avila del Pino (New York) Boy Meets Girl
Christopher Broe (Singapore) The Rescuer Hero

What is MOS?
MOS, a common phrase among filmmakers, means without synchronous sound. The MOS shorts are a test of the filmmaker’s ability to tell a story without the use of dialogue.

How Did They Do That?
The 13-hour time difference between Singapore and New York means that most often when one class is working, the other class is sleeping. In this case, exceptions were made. The screening in New York started at 9 p.m., Friday, February 13, and in Singapore, it was already 10 a.m., Saturday morning.

What Did They Learn?
The students learned they have more in common than they initially thought. During the interactive video chat, laughter filled both rooms. A student studying in New York remarked that she had traveled all the way from Singapore to New York for the same education. And, both classes have a student named Ash, who was born in Bombay and raised in the United Kingdom.