SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — Every year, around the first week of October, Owen Shapiro gets to share a weekend with some of his best friends, while having the opportunity to make hundreds more. That’s why he gets excited when the Syracuse International Film Festival, or SIFF starts each year.
“I get excited every year at this time,” Shapiro said. “It’s busy, crazy but fun.”
Shapiro co-founded SIFF with his wife, Christine Fawcett-Shapiro. Since it was founded in 2003, SIFF is still bringing in new members from around the globe, with hundreds of returnees every year. This can be credited to the personal, fun setting SIFF provides, along with great opportunities for growing filmmakers to network and witness films they would never see anywhere else.
“It’s not a market festival,” Shapiro said. “It’s not about selling your film. It’s about meeting other
filmmakers, meeting your audience. Really having a chance to have an intimate screening
of your work and allowing a discussion about your work.”
The festival has been at the Redhouse Arts Center in Syracuse the past two years . Executive Director of the Redhouse Samara Hannah is excited about the opportunities the festival brings not only the center, but to educate their students.
“To have the right music in the right place and to have to write a script,” Hannah said. “So, having that in a
festival for students I think would be extraordinary.”
Shapiro also values educating students. As an professor at Syracuse’s School of Visual and Performing Arts, Shapiro has brought students each year to submit films to the festival and engage in what it has to offer.
“The film students need to know film,” Shapiro said with a smile. “What a better way than to see films and to see films that they normally wouldn’t see at the multiplex theaters.”
Despite the films being relatively unknown, SIFF has many great options for those who do not consider themselves cinema buffs, from a documentary about a Syracuse Crunch player, to a coming-of-age story set in high school, to an Irish short film. With several films playing at once, there are so many different options for people to walk into a great film.
“And then hearing from somebody that came out of one of the other ones about how
wonderful it was and you say well mine was wonderful, I should’ve seen yours and I
should’ve seen yours – but they were both great,” Shapiro said about the multitude of options SIFF has to offer. “So, it just creates a lot of excitement.”
For more information:
http://www.syrfilm.com/index.html
