JACOB BURNS FILM CENTER IN THE NEWS

May 9, 2008
Film Series Captures the Thrill of Dance
Today through Tuesday, the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville presents "Dance on Camera." The series features an international selection of movies about dance, many of which will be accompanied by talks with filmmakers and dancers.

Apr. 13, 2008
A New Hand to Steer the Fast-Growing Burns Film Center
by Susan Hodara for THE NEW YORK TIMES
Dominick Balletta, former general manager of Manhattan's Film Forum, will become the first managing director of the Jacob Burns Film Center on May 15. “[Dominick] joins us as we are taking the next step, to ensure that we are in the best possible position to deal with our expansion,” says Stephen Apkon, the JBFC’s executive director.

Mar. 17, 2008
Student Filmmakers Craft Winning Story
by Kevin Canfield for THE JOURNAL NEWS
"A Beautiful Destiny," the short film made by three high school students in the Jacob Burns Film Center's "Unscripted" program, has won the top award in a documentary filmmaking competition sponsored by WNET/Channel 13

Feb. 3, 2008
Sundance: A Preview for Pleasantville
by Steve Apkon for THE JOURNAL NEWS
JBFC executive director Stephen Apkon shares highlights of the Sundance Film Festival with the Journal News.

Jan. 29, 2008
Animation Program Puts Students Behind the Television Screen
by Ernie Garcia for THE JOURNAL NEWS
Like most fourth-graders, Samantha Rodriguez enjoys watching cartoons without realizing how much work it takes to produce them....Rodriguez and dozens of her classmates discovered the complexity of animation when they created their own 60- to 90-second shorts that premiered last Thursday at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville.

Dec. 13, 2007
Jacob Burns Film Center Receives Grants to Continue Educational Programs
By Stacy A. Anderson for THE JOURNAL NEWS
Students across Westchester County with an interest in films will continue to train with high-tech equipment and professionals for little or no cost at the Jacob Burns Film Center. The film center, known its arts and culture offerings, was recently awarded two grants totaling $49,000 from the New York State Council of the Arts.

Oct. 17, 2007
Buzz Begins at the Burns
by Sandy Mandelberger for Fest21.com
By staging these previews, not only is the Burns Center providing an invaluable service to filmmakers and film distributors, but they are helping to create the necessary buzz that specialty films need in order to survive that crucial Opening Weekend.

August 23, 2007
Sundance Gets its Pics
By Gregg Kilday for THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
For the second consecutive year, the Sundance Institute will partner with art house cinemas nationwide to present specialized screening programs of films that have played the Sundance Film Festival.

August 17, 2007
A Film Center For Us All
By S. James Snyder for THE NEW YORK SUN
While most art houses have begun incorporating film education into their missions, [JBFC]... takes the concept of film study to a whole new level.

July 29, 2007
On Location: Uganda
By Kevin Canfield for THE JOURNAL NEWS
[The Jacob Burns Film Center's] ambitious "Project for International Understanding Through Film" initiative...will result in a documentary about American college students and the Ugandan people they're working with.

July 6, 2007
Screenings: Takashi Miike
By Germain Lussier for TIMES HERALD-RECORD
Take all the sick, twisted, evil filmmakers in Hollywood, roll them into one and the result might resemble Takashi Miike....Intrigued? Well, the Jacob Burns Film Center is presenting an "After Dark" retrospective on the filmmaker beginning this week.

July 6, 2007
Catch the French New Wave at the Jacob Burns Film Center
by Chris Funderburg for THE JOURNAL NEWS
"The French New Wave," a film series that opens at the Jacob Burns Film Center on Thursday, focuses on the early years of the film movement spawned by the Cahier critics-turned-filmmakers: the "Nouvelle Vague" (or "New Wave").

July 4, 2007
Exploring the Meditative Life
by Sandy Mandelberger for FILM NEW YORK
While Independence Day for most people is usually a day at the beach or a backyard barbeque extravaganza, the Jacob Burns Film Center has taken a different tack to celebrate the July 4th holidays by presenting a three-film series called "The Meditative Life," which explores the inner realities of existence (which can be just as explosive as any fireworks display).

June 21, 2007
Movie event: 'War' in Pleasantville
by Kevin Canfield for THE JOURNAL NEWS
Director Sergei Bondarchuk's 1968 gargantuan film version of Tolstoy's famed 19th century novel [War and Peace]... will serve as the centerpiece of Sunday's programming at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville. Briarcliff Manor's Simon Schama, the British historian now on PBS presenting "Power of Art," will serve as host.

June 3, 2007
A High School Drama Over Artistic Freedom
by Kate Stone Lombard for the New York Times
On May 23, the Jacob Burns Film Center hosted a reading of "The Laramie Project" by students from Sleepy Hollow High School’s Gay-Straight Alliance.

May 3, 2007
JBFC film series shows another side of Indian film
by Kevin Canfield for THE JOURNAL NEWS
The Jacob Burns Film Center presents "India Now," a sampling of eight full-length films and two shorts that are alternately funny and sober, timeless and topical, traditional and innovative.

Apr. 9, 2007
Demme Brings Korean Superstar to Burns
by Kevin Canfield for THE JOURNAL NEWS
Starting Wednesday in Pleasantville, film fans will have the chance to see why [Joong-hoon] Park is one of Asia's biggest movie stars.

Mar. 13, 2007
Retrospective of Actor Park in New York
by Cathy Rose A. Garcia for The Korea Times
The Jacob Burns Film Center in New York will hold a mini-retrospective of Korean actor Park Joong-hoon’s films from April 11 to 17....Park will also conduct two question-and-answer sessions with fans on April 11 and 15.

Feb. 11, 2007
Look to Unique Facility
Editorial for THE JOURNAL NEWS
We urge to public to support the Jacob Burns Center through membership and contributions to the building fund. And we think Apkon, the center and its talented staff are exactly the kind of innovators state education officials should turn to, for teachers and artists who inspire and programs that work.

Feb. 6, 2007
Animators Get Red-Carpet Treatment
by Kevin Canfield for THE JOURNAL NEWS
The red-carpet event at the Jacob Burns Film Center...will feature films that are the product of "Animation: Minds in Motion!" a Burns outreach program that helps students learn how to make short animated movies.

Feb. 4, 2007
Sundance Diary: 27 Movies, No Skiing
by Stephen Apkon for THE JOURNAL NEWS
JBFC executive director Stephen Apkon shares his Sundance Film Festival diary with the Journal News.

Jan. 30, 2007
Producer Christine Vachon's Killer Life
by Sandy Mandelberger for FILM NEW YORK
Coming on the heels of the Sundance Film Festival, the film world's annual love fest with American indie cinema, it was perfect timing for the Jacob Burns Film Center to invite veteran indie producer Christine Vachon to give a talk as part of the Center's Celebrating Women Filmmakers series.

Jan. 21, 2007
Departed Collector Opens Film Celebration of Art and Artists
By Patrick Verel for THE NEW YORK TIMES
They're throwing a party for Allan Stone this week in Pleasantville, but he won’t be there....The Collector, which is having its premiere in the New York area on Wednesday at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, is the first of six films being shown as part of the center’s "FrameWorks: Art on Film" series.

Jan. 19, 2007
Art on film: A collector's life
By Georgette Gouveia for THE JOURNAL NEWS
Filmmaker Olympia Stone intended The Collector to be a voyage around her father, Manhattan art dealer Allan Stone - an exploration of his boundless love of objects.  She could not have foreseen that the documentary - which inaugurates the second "FrameWorks: Art on Film" series at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville on Wednesday - would become a memorial as well.

Jan. 14, 2007
Art House to Get a Campus
by Elsa Brenner for THE NEW YORK TIMES
Building on five years of success, the [Jacob Burns Film Center], a nonprofit organization, has broken ground on a new $12 million 25,000-square-foot media and education center that is scheduled to open in 2008.

Jan. 12, 2007
Treasures of the Art-House: Janus Films Now Showing at the Burns
by David Schwartz for THE JOURNAL NEWS
You can...see these [Janus Films] treasures of the golden age of art-house cinema at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, where the ambitious and exciting new series "50 Years of Janus Films" presents 27 cinematic masterpieces, all in glorious new prints. Many of the screenings will be introduced by guest speakers.

Nov. 16, 2006
Burns Center to Break Ground on $15M Film Education Center
by Len Maniace for THE JOURNAL NEWS
An empty print shop that serviced a famous institution of old media, Reader's Digest, is about to give way to a sleek media and education center operated by the Jacob Burns Film Center. The Burns Center breaks ground today on a $15 million building packed with classrooms and professional film-production facilities.

Nov. 8, 2006
Teachers use Election Day for Professional Development
by Diana Bellettiere and Alice Gomstym for THE JOURNAL NEWS
...In Pleasantville, the Jacob Burns Film Center launched a collaborative program with the Yonkers school district that is geared toward teaching critical viewing skills and the techniques of telling a story through film. About 50 third-grade teachers from 13 Yonkers elementary schools participated in the first of two workshops. Each school received a complimentary media cart with a television and DVD player to use for the program. Funding was made possible by the Frog Rock foundation.

Nov. 3, 2006
Global Watch 2006: Documenting a Trend Toward Documentaries
by Kevin Canfield for THE JOURNAL NEWS
The Burns Film Center's Global Watch 2006: Crisis, Culture & Human Rights series examines social issues...including health care and terminal illness, demagoguery and cults, the global food industry, the anti-Vietnam War Catholic left, the environment, labor issues and Middle Eastern politics. The war in Iraq and the 2004 presidential election will get the once-over, too.

Oct. 20, 2006
The Path to Global Prestige
by Vicente Rodriguez-Ortega for THE JOURNAL NEWS
The "Viva Pedro!" series at the Jacob Burns Film Center revisits most of the major highlights of the extensive body of works of the Spanish director - allowing us to re-evaluate his earlier, and perhaps wilder, films in the light of his more calculated but equally heartfelt late celluloid canvases.

Oct. 20, 2006
8 by Almódovar at Burns Center
by Kevin Canfield for THE JOURNAL NEWS
Opening at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville tonight, "Viva Pedro!" is an extraordinary look at the work of Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almódovar.

Oct. 19, 2006
Students View Film on How Hip-Hop Affects Image of Black Masculinity
by Desiree Grand for THE JOURNAL NEWS
Students from Mount Vernon and Scarsdale high schools discuss their reactions to a special screening of the documentary Beyond Beats and Rhymes: A Hip-Hop Head Weighs in on Manhood in Hip-Hop Culture and their discussion with the flim's director Byron Hurt.

Oct. 11, 2006
Kraft grant to Burns Center
THE JOURNAL NEWS
Tarrytown's Kraft Foods has given $25,000 to the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville for its education program Animation: Minds in Motion!

Oct. 5, 2006
Jacob Burns Film Center Awards Dinner
PANACHE
The Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, NY held their Fifth Anniversary Celebration and Awards Dinner on September 16, under a starry tent in Pleasantville.

Aug. 26, 2006
Pleasantville Film Center Trains Young Moviemakers
by Tom Faure for THE JOURNAL NEWS
"While many think of summer as Hollywood's least Oscar-worthy movie season, the time is perfect for children at the Jacob Burns Film Center.
Hundreds sign up annually for various Burns programs, which meet in various Westchester locations and generally cater to underserved youths."

Aug. 4, 2006
Bergman 101: Director of Influence
by Ara Osterweil for THE JOURNAL NEWS
"This month, the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville pays tribute to legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman with a retrospective of his work. The Line asked the Burns' resident film scholar Ara Osterweil to share some of her "Bergman 101" program that began the three-week series last night."

June 11, 2006
The Burns at 5
by David Schwartz for THE JOURNAL NEWS
"Thousands of movies and hundred of guest speakers after opening its doors in 2001, the Burns is firmly established as a vibrant cultural institution with a unique blend of international scope, celebrity glitz and small-town charm."

Mar. 14, 2006
Celebrating Jewish Film in Westchester
by THE JOURNAL NEWS
Highlights of the JBFC's "Westchester Celebrates Jewish Film 2006" series, running from Mar. 16 to April 5. Click Here for more info about the series.

Feb. 6, 2006
A Sundance Film Festival Diary
by Steve Apkon for THE JOURNAL NEWS
JBFC Executive Director Stephen Apkon reports back from this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Nov. 3, 2005
Global Watch film festival at Burns Center
by Bob Heisler, THE JOURNAL NEWS
A profile of this first-ever JBFC series of films "about social issues, made to be seen in a social setting." Click Here for more info about the series.

Sept. 10, 2005
Student Film Premiere
By Amy Sara Clark, THE JOURNAL NEWS
A profile of Unscripted, the JBFC's documentary filmmaking program for teens.

Sept. 8, 2005
Mount Vernon non-citizen who lost child in combat is accepted into Gold Star Mothers
By Jim Fitzgerald, Associated Press Writer, NEWSDAY
"...Carmen Palmer, of Mount Vernon, learned that her application had been accepted when she arrived Wednesday night at the Jacob Burns Film Center for the screening of a short, touching film dedicated to women who have lost children in combat."

For more information, including photo requests, contact Abby Popper, Public Relations Coordinator, at apopper@burnsfilmcenter.org or (914) 773-7663 ext. 24.