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Jacob Burns Film Center Celebrates 10th Anniversary Steven Spielberg to be Featured Guest at September Gala By Jim Ormond


“At the core, it’s about community,” says Steve Apkon, Founder and Executive Director of the Jacob Burns Film Center (JBFC) in Pleasantville, now celebrating its 10th anniversary in September with Steven Spielberg on hand to accept the JBFC 2011 Vision Award. This seems like a modest statement considering that, over the past decade, some one million people have viewed 4,000 films at the center and more than 65,000 students have par- ticipated in its education programs.


Visual literacy is at the core of the Jacob Burns Film Center's mission.


These numbers are impressive, but for Apkon the most vital thing about the film center is the way in which it brings people together. “The common threads that run throughout all our work are a sense of community, shared cultural experience, and public dialogue,” he says. That sense of community is what brought Apkon and his wife Lisa, with one child and one on the way, from Manhattan to Pleasantville in 1993. “There seemed to be a lot of peo- ple walking, and the town had good sidewalks, as well as good schools.” A native of Framingham, Massachusetts, with a successful career on Wall Street and a Harvard MBA, Apkon always had a love of film.


It was perhaps fortuitous that many of Apkon’s new neighbors in and around Pleasantville would be inspired to help him make his dream of establishing a center for the best in documentary, independent and world cinema a reality. “I had no background in film and there was no reason for anyone to think we could accomplish this,” says Apkon. “The people who believed it first were the family of Jacob Burns, the Shenkman family. Apkon credits them with making the film center a reality with a lead gift of $1.5 million and the naming of the center for the Shenkmans’ grandfather, Jacob Burns. “The founda- tion got us started and they have been at our side ever since,” he adds.


JBFC Executive Director, Steve Apkon welcomes film legend Robert Redford.


(above) The film center's theaters opened in June 2001. A media arts lab facility opened in January 2009.


Many of the people who were there at the beginning, including founding board members, are still generously sharing their time, talents and resources. Take, for example, Janet Maslin, a formidable critic for The New York Times. She bumped into Apkon one day outside a dry cleaner in Pleasantville when the film center was just a dream. Maslin has served as the President of the JBFC since 2004 and Apkon refers to her as a ‘mentor and an inspiration.’ David Swope, President and founder of Club Fit, is the current chairman. Apkon met him at one of the earliest planning meetings and credits Swope with a ‘sharp and energetic mind.’ Also there from the beginning; Jerry and Nancy Kohlberg, who love ‘work- ing at the grassroots level’; Art and Becky Samberg (Art Samberg was former board chairman and headed up the capital campaign for the Media Arts Lab) ‘dedicated and brilliant.’ Hugh Price, a former leader of the National Urban League, and Janet Benton, President of the Frog


Rock Foundation, have been especially involved in the education programs. He reminisces, too, about a phone call from Debra Winger volunteering her services and those of her husband, Arliss Howard.


In the film industry, celebrity power can never be under- estimated. Board member Jonathan Demme (Director of Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia) has been very hands on with many aspects of the JBFC’s work. Most notably, Demme curates the JBFC’s “Rarely Seen Cinema” series and has long advocated creating profes- sional productions at the center. According to Apkon, Ron Howard has also been a ‘great ambassador for us within the film community.’ Industry buzz has made the JBFC a popular venue for stars screening their films. In the past few years, luminaries such as Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford and Meryl Streep have travelled to Pleasantville for events.


The Jacob Burns Film Center’s theaters opened in June of 2001, after an extensive re-construction of the defunct Rome movie theater. Many were surprised therefore, when a few years later, the Board announced a new capital campaign to build another building…a state-of the-art Media Arts Lab, to house the JBFC’s education programming down the street. The 27,000 square-foot facility, opened in January 2009, features 16 editing suites, a recording studio, a soundstage, and a 60-seat screening room. “People thought we were crazy to take on another big project only a few years after we opened,” says Apkon. “But an education center had been part of our vision since the very beginning.”


Underpinning the Jacob Burns Film Center’s educa- tion programs, however, is the idea that visual media is becoming the dominant way people receive information, interpret their world, and even participate in society. These trends have only accelerated in the ten years since the JBFC opened.


Thus the over-arching goal of the JBFC’s education pro- grams is to give young people tools to better navigate the digital world. Now that the Media Arts Lab is opened, in the next ten years, the JBFC plans to create virtual platforms housing curricula that can be used by teach- ers throughout the country to help them integrate visual literacy into the K-12 curriculum.


The arts are at the heart of it all. Technology is changing how we receive film and video, but a film is, after all, a composite art form drawn from writing, acting, music, and the visual arts. Says Apkon, “It is a difficult time in the world. People are more vulnerable and more con- nected. The arts help us move forward as a community and solve problems creatively.”


For more information, visit www.burnsfilmcenter.org.


Westchester County Business Journal • ARTSWNEWS


JUNE 2011


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