NYS Writers Institute Hosts 3rd Annual Albany Film Festival This Saturday

By Bethany Bump

ALBANY, N.Y. (March 28, 2023) — The New York State Writers Institute’s (NYSWI) third annual Albany Film Festival returns to campus this Saturday with a day’s worth of screenings and conversations with award-winning filmmakers, novelists and screenwriters.

This year’s festival, which is free and open to the public, will be held from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the Campus Center, and will emphasize the art of storytelling with films and conversations demonstrating the overlap between writing and film.

“We always wanted a big, community-wide event in the spring to serve as a companion for our Book Festival in the fall,” said Paul Grondahl, executive director of the NYSWI. “And they're related because there's a lot about writing and adapting books in the film festival. You can't have a film without writing because it really starts with the script. Actors and directors will tell you, if they have a beautiful script, it's a lot easier than trying to work with lousy writing.”

Featured guests will include Rick Moody and Joyce Carol Oates, who will discuss the film adaptations of their respective novels The Ice Storm and Blonde, the latter of which generated considerable controversy for its depiction of Marilyn Monroe when it was adapted for Netflix last year.

Veteran actor Stephen Lang, most recently seen in James Cameron’s Avatar films, will also be on campus Saturday to be presented with the Ironweed Award for Exemplary Achievement in Film, along with filmmakers James Schamus, Amy Carey Linton and Keith Beauchamp, who wrote and produced the 2022 film Till, about the quest for justice by Mamie Till-Mobley after the lynching of her son, Emmett Till, in 1955.

Local Films in Focus

Grondahl said there was an effort to emphasize diverse and local filmmakers at this year’s festival. A number of films being screened Saturday have tie-ins with the local Capital Region community, he said.

Witness, directed by Masood Haque, tells the story of an Albany imam and pizza shop owner who became the targets of an FBI terror sting in 2003. The Last Shot, by Prince Sprauve, follows the true story of 15-year-old Eddie Stanley, Jr., a Schenectady High School student and basketball star who was shot and killed in 2011. Both Haque and Sprauve will participate in discussions about their films Saturday.

In addition to film screenings, there will be panel discussions on censorship in cinema, video-making and films, and the future of movie criticism.

A closing ceremony will be held at 6 p.m. for presentation of the Ironweed Awards, named after NYSWI founder William Kennedy’s novel which was adapted for the screen in 1987, and the Short Film Awards, which will include a $300 prize for best student short film. The first Ironweed Award was presented to legendary director Francis Ford Coppola at a standing-room-only event in 2019.

“It really is community engagement,” Grondahl said. “The Book Festival and Film Festival probably bring as many or more community members to campus as a basketball game or football game. So it's a good opportunity to showcase the university and what the Writers Institute is doing and what these really talented filmmakers — those who are just beginning and veterans — are doing.”

For more details and a full lineup of events, visit the Albany Film Festival website.