Mary Stuart Masterson’s The
Cake Eaters among Top Prize Winners at Stony Brook Film Festival; Hungarian
film, Children of Glory, directed by Krisztina Goda, Also Rises to Top July 26, 2008, Stony Brook,
NY—The 13th Annual Stony Brook Film Festival, acclaimed by
filmmakers for consistently drawing the largest audiences on the fest circuit,
announced its award winners at a reception on closing night, Saturday, July 26. Best
Feature-Jury The
Cake Eaters Directed by Mary Stuart
Masterson. Written by Jayce
Bartok. With Kristen Stewart, Aaron Stanford, Bruce Dern,
Elizabeth Ashley, Jayce Bartok, Miriam Shor, Talia Balsam, Melissa Leo
and Jesse L. Martin. Best
Feature-Audience Choice Children
of Glory Directed by Krisztina Goda. Written by Joe Eszterhas and Éva Gárdos. With Kata Dobó
and Iván Fenyö. From Hungary. Best
Short-Jury In the
Name of the Son Directed by Harun Mehmedinovic. With Sergej Trifunovic,
Jack Dimich, Elvedin Slipac and Ingrid Walters. Best
Short-Audience Choice The
Drummer Written,
produced and directed by Bill Block. With Dave Ratajczak and Asmeret Ghebremichael. Achievement
in Filmmaking The
Stone Angel Directed by Kari Skogland. With Ellen Burstyn, Christine Horne,
Cole Hauser, Kevin Zegers, Ellen Page, Dylan Baker
and Wings Hauser. The awards were presented by
film critic John Anderson following the East Coast premiere of Camille, directed by Gregory MacKenzie and written by Nick Pustay,
with Sienna Miller, James Franco, David Carradine, Ed
Lauter and Scott Glenn, and screened courtesy of
Kathy Morgan International. More About
the Winning Films The Cake Eaters was Mary Stuart Masterson’s directorial debut, a romantic
drama set in a small town where the intimate secrets and tensions of two
families force them to come to terms with life, love and death. The Cake Eaters was written by Jayce Bartok, who also played the character of Guy in the
film, alongside an outstanding group of actors who created an entirely
believable story. Children of Glory came to the Festival from long-time contributor,
Fortissimo Films of the Netherlands. The Hungarian film is set in Budapest,
1956, at a time when an anti-Soviet revolution is brewing in the streets. A
fiery young woman student and a non-political waterpolo
star find themselves in the heart of the uprising. Director Krisztina
Goda is a member of the young generation of talented
Hungarian directors bringing relevant stories to the screen. The script for the short In
the Name of the Son came from director Harun Mehmedinovic’s experience of living under siege in Sarajevo
in the Bosnian war. Characters in the film are caught between a clash of old
vs. new worlds, a common theme in the lives of immigrants. Harun,
who has an MFA degree from the American Film Institute, lives in Los Angeles.
(Incidentally, the film was shot in the Angeles National Forest, where a
hillside had been burned by a forest fire just days
earlier.) The Drummer is Bill Block’s directorial debut and his “love letter to
music,” telling the story of a struggling musician and a gig at a Connecticut
wedding. The actor who plays the drummer, Dave Ratajczak,
is a professional musician who has played in Broadway orchestras, on movie
soundtracks and at Carnegie Hall. “In addition to the Jury and
Audience Awards, a special award for Achievement in Filmmaking is being
presented to Kari Skogland, writer/director/producer
of The
Stone Angel,” said Alan Inkles, Director of the Stony Brook Film
Festival. Skogland was the third female director to
be recognized at the Stony Brook Film Festival awards ceremony for outstanding
feature films. In The Stone Angel, Kari
Skogland has created a masterful adaptation of the
best selling novel by Margaret Laurence. The film features the feisty Ellen
Burstyn as Hagar Shipley and newcomer Christine Horne as the young Hagar. Prizes were sponsored by JetBlue Airways, HBO, Renaissance Technologies, Teachers
Federal Credit Union and Friends of Staller Center. Highlights of the Stony Brook
Film Festival This year, five of the features
screened at the Festival were Canadian.
The Government of Canada became an additional Festival sponsor this
year, and Daniel Sullivan, Consul General; Mary
Anne Dehler, Consul of Public Affairs for Canada; and
Anna Velasco, Arts & Culture Officer for the Canadian Consulate, all
attended Opening Night. Opening night featured Emotional Arithmetic, directed by Paolo Barzman, who participated in a Q&A after the screening;
others included Amal, filmed in India and written and
directed by Richie Mehta, at Stony Brook courtesy of Seville Pictures of
Montreal, Quebec; Bluff, directed by
Simon Olivier and Marc-André Lavoie; Kari Skogland’s The Stone Angel; and Summit Circle, written and directed by
Bernard Émond. Two World Premieres were in the
mix: Route 30, a comedy directed by
John Putch with Dana Delany among the cast, and Cat City by Brent Huff, starring Rebecca
Pidgeon and Brian Dennehy.
Both Putch and Huff are returning filmmakers who
screened at Stony Brook in the past. Dana Delany and Mary Stuart Masterson were
among actors and directors here for the passholder/filmmaker
reception on Saturday, July 19, to support their films. This year the line-up at the
Stony Brook Film Festival included provocative foreign films, unusual and
absorbing American premieres, entertaining comedies, and a variety of
outstanding short films. Films from all over the world were featured and over a
dozen languages were in the mix. The Stony Brook Film Festival is produced by
Staller Center for the Arts at Stony Brook University. Presenting sponsors this year
were HBO, JetBlue Airways, Suffolk County, Teachers
Federal Credit Union, The Village Voice and WALK 97.5 Radio. ### |
