Stefan
Nadelman's Flash-animated film Terminal Bar was recently awarded the
Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking at Sundance 2003. This original and
compelling documentary uses still images, text, music and animation
to illustrate the lives of the denizens of a notorious Manhattan dive
bar that once employed Nadelman's father and attracted many of New
York's forgotten and downtrodden citizens.
For
Nadelman, an autodidactical filmmaker, animation was not only the
best approach, but the only approach to his award-winning project.
Drawn from 2500 pictures taken by his father, the most pure route
to bringing Terminal Bar to life was to scan the negatives digitally
and animate using Flash. Being able to animate the movements of the
pictures offered the greatest flexibility in regards to manipulating
the image - tweaking, perfecting, and completing complex moves - thereby
superceding any other filmmaking method.
"My
path to filmmaking was partly serendipitous and partly deliberate,"
explains Nadelman. "My father used all the available wall space to
hang his photography of the sad black-and-white portraits taken at
the Terminal Bar. In addition to his own work, my father hung Escher
prints, and so through transitive property, I became fond of this
mathematical approach to art. As an adolescent, I had taken to pen
and paper, mostly cartooning. I sampled different mediums as any normal
young artist would, until Apple debuted the 512k in the mid 1980s.
This was the beginning of my love affair with the computer."
With
access to a treasure trove of the thousands of photographs his father
took while he worked at the Manhattan bar in the '70s, as well as
the colorful stories that he had saved in his head, Nadelman set out
to give exposure to this unique story. It took a year for Nadelman
to fashion the 23-minute documentary, using simple programs like IVIEW,
Premiere, and Sound Edit.
Now
Nadelman is beginning to enjoy the fruits of his labor with critical
and audience acclaim at both Sundance and RESFEST, where it won the
Audience Choice Prize. Yet despite his recent success, the humble
Nadelman says that whenever he refers to himself as a filmmaker, he
feels slightly uncomfortable with the label: "I believe that saying
you're a filmmaker is like saying you're a DJ. No one will believe
you because everyone claims to be one." Fortunately, he has more than
enough evidence to support his claim. Terminal Bar is a shining example
of the way in which animation is a key tool for the modern filmmaker
and is a tribute to the seamless marriage of content and technique.
Terminal Bar can be seen next at Black Maria and the N.Y. International
Independent Film and Video Festival.
