An
ISU alumnus has been awarded a Sundance Film Festival award for a
short film that documents the lives of New York's roughest drinking
crowd.
Independent
filmmaker Stefan Nadelman, a 1994 graduate in fine arts, won the jury
prize in short filmmaking for his film, "Terminal Bar," during the
2003 Sundance Film Festival held Jan. 16-23 in Park City, Utah. The
annual festival, launched by Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford,
honors outstanding independent films and filmmakers.
Nadelman
was encouraged to enter his film in the festival after winning the
best short film award at ResFest Digital Film Festival last year.
ResFest is a traveling film festival based in New York that highlights
the best in digital filmmaking.
"From
the 3,000 entries, Sundance took about 90 and [Stefan] won it," said
Sheldon Nadelman, Stefan Nadelman's father. "I think he did a really
great job. It was better than good -- it was something different."
Stefan
Nadelman is now getting calls from producers and filmmakers in Hollywood,
and is currently at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in France
promoting "Terminal Bar." He was unavailable for comment.
The
22-minute film tells the stories and lives of the patrons of Terminal
Bar, a New York drinking establishment. The bar, which used to be
located at 41st Street and 8th Avenue, was named "the roughest bar
in town" by New York Magazine in 1980. The Terminal Bar used to be
an Irish pub, but gradually turned into a predominately gay bar. It
officially closed in 1982.
Sheldon
Nadelman, Stefan Nadelman's father, worked as a bartender at Terminal
Bar between 1972 and 1982 and photographed and collected more than
2,500 black-and-white pictures of the bar's customers.
"I
met a lot of good people, a lot of crazy people, a lot of sick people,"
Sheldon Nadelman said. "It was pretty rough, but it was rewarding
at the end because of all the photographs."
Sheldon
Nadelman said he proudly displayed the still photographs of the Terminal
Bar's patrons around the Nadelman house; he said they represented
a wide range of the people living and working in the city. Stefan
Nadelman was inspired to create the film through a combination of
photographs, interviews with his father and narration based on articles
written about the bar.
"[Stefan]
was surrounded by these photographs and my art," Sheldon Nadelman
said. "It was 10 years of photographs of all these faces."
Although
the boys were young during Sheldon Nadelman's years working at Terminal
Bar, Cary Nadelman, Stefan Nadelman's brother and agent, said the
photographs were enough for the boys to understand its atmosphere.
"They
were really all alcoholics and winos," said Cary Nadelman.
Cary
Nadelman said his brother's reaction after winning the Sundance award
was one of complete shock. "Stefan was blown away," Cary Nadelman
said. "He called me about 20 minutes after the ceremony and he was
almost crying."
Cary Nadelman said his brother's fine arts degree doesn't really relate
to his current interests in film.
"His
background in film is pretty much nonexistent -- he got into film
by doing it on the side as a passion," Cary Nadelman said.
While
working in New York as a Web designer, Stefan Nadelman was exposed
to Macromedia Flash, a computer software program commonly used to
design multimedia-rich Internet sites. He then left a career in Web
design to pursue a film career, but still continues his job as an
art director.
Not
only is the subject matter of the film striking, but so too is the
way in which the film was created -- the use of Web design expertise
to make still photographs into a moving picture is unique to the film
world, Cary Nadelman said.
"[Stefan's
filmmaking style] is a style that's never been done before," he said.
"Flash has rarely been used in film."
Stefan
Nadelman was not prepared for the amount of attention the film would
receive, Cary Nadelman said.
"It
seems to have opened a lot of doors for him," he said.
