The Stony Brook Southampton/Killer Films MFA in Film Program continued its successful year with a best film award and news of two film festival acceptances for faculty member Melissa Bank.
MFA in Film degree candidate Bentley Heyman’s short film Kingdom won the Best Experimental Film award at the inaugural Nottingham International Film Festival (NottIFF). Kingdom was developed in the MFA in Film program and workshopped with Jennie Allen and Mercedes Ruehl.
Also announced this week, author turned director Melissa Bank’s short film, Siren, has been accepted to two festivals, both in Manhattan in November: the 2016 New York Short Film Festival, running from November 4 to 10 (www.newyorkshort.com); and the Zero Film Festival on November 9.
Siren was adapted from Bank’s short story, “Run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run Away,” and was shot as part of the Film program’s groundbreaking 202020 initiative.
Bank, who also teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing program at Stony Brook Southampton and in the famed Southampton Writers Conference each summer, will join the Director of the MFA in Film program, Killer Films chief Christine Vachon; MFA in Film Associate Director Magdalene Brandeis; and another MFA in Creative Writing professor, the author and film authority Neal Gabler in a panel discussion at the 2017 AWP conference, held February 8 to 11, 2017 in Washington, D.C.
Titled “Loose, Faithful, and Literal: Adaptation from Novel to Screen,” the panel discussion will examine, among other topics, how screenwriters and directors may vary in terms of how faithfully, loosely, or literally they cling to the original story when adapting a long story into the moving picture medium.
Read more about Heyman and Bank’s achievements in this press release from the Stony Brook Southampton/Killer Films MFA in Film program.
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