Stony Brook Film Festival Returns With a Glimpse of Hollywood Faces

The Stony Brook Film Festival will return for its 29th year from July 18 to July 27. The festival is expected to screen 36 films and accompanying shorts, with selections drawn from around the world.

WSHU's Eda Uzunlar sat down with festival founder and director Alan Inkles to discuss this year's selection and the festival's growth over nearly three decades.

WSHU: Alan, you founded this film festival 29 years ago and have been involved in every edition. Tell us about the work that goes into it and how it culminates on the opening night.

AI: It's an incredible energy. Even though it's a 10-day festival, we really work on it all year round. The films start coming in as early as November. My colleagues and I get about 3,000 films and it's a great feeling. So on opening night, it's usually packed and you know, you think film festivals are mostly small venues. It's independent films and foreign films.

CLIP, A fantastic relationship: It's like when he showed me his tattoo, I knew I could never look at it again. Totally. It became unbearable.

AI: You know, in Tribeca and the Hamptons, a lot of movies are in small theaters, but we have a 1,000-seat theater. About 800 people can be there to see a movie they've never heard of before.

CLIP, The queen of my dreams: <> She's an MFA mom. It's an acronym. Nobody pronounces it like a word. I'm not nobody.

AI: It might be a foreign language film, but this year we have a great French film.

AI: But they took a risk. They looked at the brochure, they've trusted us for 29 years, and they packaged it up for a movie. There's no criticism of it. They have no idea what they're going to see. There's no other way for them to see this movie, and there's no way to describe it. It's indescribable. It's like a first every year for 29 years. You never get tired of it, Eda.

WSHU: Well, I guess so, considering you’ve been playing this sport for almost three decades. Tell me how you’ve seen this event evolve and grow over time.

AI: We're probably one of the hardest festivals to get into. Over the years, as we don't know, I've made 100 films. So when I think back to the first year, I used my five rooms. I had a main room, a recital room, and a video room. You see people going from room to room. I thought, this is not who we are.

So I've done a lot of things, with more theaters and more films. What I love is that with a great team, we've kind of moved away from the things that weren't working and we have a real system that works. So I would say more than anything, I love how we've grown. I think we've become a major mini-festival where people want to come and play because they know I'm going to work for them. I'm going to promote their films.

WSHU: And you have a few surprises up your sleeve. This year's lineup includes a sneak peek of an upcoming film. What can you tell us about this special evening?

AI: Yes, a filmmaker, I won't mention his name, but he's a Long Island filmmaker. He's back on Long Island. He lived in Los Angeles for a while. He produced this really brilliant film. There's a couple of stars in it that people will recognize from other films. Because the film has a big connection actually, it also has a connection to Stony Brook in a way, and to what's going on at Stony Brook Hospital. It's kind of a teaser. It's a narrative film. It's a great film. It's just been picked up for distribution. So this is the first time that anybody's going to see this film anywhere. I think even the cast and crew, a lot of them will come see the film. So it's Sunday night, the 21st, at 7:00. It has a social significance, [and] connects to the university. It's definitely worth coming and I think you'll really enjoy it.