Short Film Competition, Documentary and Student Jury
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Incendiary or poignant, experimental or timeless, funny or tragic: this year’s shorts programs comprise works by both established and emerging filmmakers from around the world.
David Bowie
David Bowie was born in 1947. By the mid-’70s, he had recorded the albums The Man Who Sold the World, Space Oddity, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs, Station to Station, and Young Americans, which included “Fame,” his first US number one single. He relocated to Berlin in 1976 and recorded Low and Heroes with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti. In 1979 he made his Broadway debut in The Elephant Man and released Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), followed by Let’s Dance. He wrote and codirected many of his own music videos, including the iconic “Ashes To Ashes.” Bowie has worked with his band Tin Machine, collaborated with the dance company La La La Human Steps, written music for Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha Of Suburbia, and created and performed in several world tours. In the ’90s and ’00s, he released the albums Outside, Earthling, hours..., Heathen, and Reality. In 1999 he became a Commandeur dans L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Bowie’s film work includes The Prestige, The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Hunger, and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. In 2007, he was honored with the Webby Lifetime Achievement Award for pushing the boundaries between art and technology. This year he will appear in August, a film directed by newcomer Austin Chick.
Red Burns
Red Burns is chair of the Interactive Telecommunications Program in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. During the 1970s, she designed and directed a series of telecommunications projects, including two-way television for and by senior citizens, telecommunications applications to serve the developmentally disabled, and one of the first teletext field trials in the United States. She also created a CD-ROM on chaos theory. She was named Tokyo Broadcasting System chair in 1997 and has been inducted into the New York Women in Communications Matrix Hall of Fame and the Art Directors Club’s Hall of Fame. Among her awards are the Distinguished Leadership Award for achievement in technology from the New York Hall of Science, the Chrysler Design Award, the 1997 Matrix Award (the first in the New Media category), Crain’s All-Stars Educator’s Award, and New York’s Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Science and Technology. She has also been listed on Richard Saul Wurman’s “Who’s Really Who 1000.” Burns serves as a board member for the Charles H. Revson Foundation and Creative Capital. She has served on boards of the Art Director’s Club, the New York Times Digital Company, the Ivrea Institute (Italy), and ProBono.net. She was a founding member of the Media Lab Europe board and the board of directors of the New York New Media Association. Professor Burns continues to research and teach.
David de Rothschild
David de Rothschild was born in 1978 in London. He received a BSc from Oxford Brookes University and an advanced diploma in natural medicine from the College of Naturopathic Medicine. In ’05, David founded Adventure Ecology, which uses adventure and art to inform, inspire action and promote responsibility for the planet. In ’06, he spent more than 100 days crossing the Arctic, becoming one of only 42 people—and the youngest British person— to reach both poles. He is one of only 14 people to traverse Antarctica and broke the world record for the fastest crossing of the Greenland Icecap. David wrote The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook and traveled to Ecuador with a group of artists to document damage caused by oil drilling. In ’08, he will sail 8,000 miles across the Pacific in a boat made from plastic bottles on an adventure called the Plastiki, crossing the world’s largest garbage dump, to draw attention to human impact on the earth. National Geographic named David an Emerging Explorer, and Clean Up The World invited him to be an international ambassador. The World Economic Forum made David a Young Global Leader, and GQ named him Environmentalist of the Year.
Matthew Modine
Matthew Modine is a veteran of more than 50 films, including Birdy, Married to the Mob, Vision Quest, Full Metal Jacket, Gross Anatomy, The Browning Version, Pacific Heights, Any Given Sunday, Memphis Belle, and Shortcuts. He has worked with many of the most highly regarded directors in the industry, including Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, Jonathan Demme, and John Sayles. Most recently, Modine starred in the critically acclaimed television show Weeds. He has won a Golden Globe award and the Venice Film Festival’s Volpi Cup and Golden Lion awards for best actor. Modine received Golden Globe and Emmy nominations for his performances in And the Band Played On and What the Deaf Man Heard. On stage, he has appeared in Arthur Miller’s Resurrection Blues and Finishing the Picture. Modine’s book Full Metal Jacket Diary, a photographic account of Kubrick’s film set, won the AIGA 50/50 award. He has directed three short films, When I Was a Boy, Smoking, and Ecce Pirate. All debuted at the Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim and have played at film festivals worldwide, including MoMA’s prestigious New Directors/New Films. He also wrote, directed, and starred in his feature directorial debut, If… Dog… Rabbit and directed a theatrical production of 12 Angry Men.
Lee Brian Schrager
Lee Brian Schrager, one of the nation’s preeminent event planners and public relations experts, serves as the Director of Special Events & Media Relations at Southern Wine & Spirits of America. Most noteworthy in Schrager’s extensive resume is his creation of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. Now in its eighth year, the South Beach Wine & Food Festival is now attended by approximately 35,000 people hungry for a taste of the festival’s impressive lineup of events filled with the biggest names in the culinary world and a wine program second to none. This fall, in conjunction with Food Network, Lee will launch the New York City Wine & Food Festival. Prior to joining Southern Wine & Spirits of America, Schrager spent 17 years with InterContinental Hotels across the country, where he began as a room service manager and worked his way up to Vice President of Food & Beverage at the InterContinental Hotels. Schrager studied at the Culinary Institute of America and at the School of Hospitality Management at Florida International University. Schrager is also an active philanthropist sitting on executive boards for Care Resource, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Golden Angels, and The Food Bank of New York City. Lee was also awarded the prestigious Food Arts Silver Spoon in January of 2008.
