For a solid week, our town will be in the spotlight of the international film world, as it hosts the 5th Annual Gold Coast International Film Festival, Nov. 9-15.
But year-round, the Gold Coast Arts Center, founded more than 20 years ago in Great Neck, turns our area into a cultural mecca that enhances the quality of life for all of us.
It is not just outstanding films which during film series presented throughout the year give us front-row seats to preview screenings of important movies, with the added privilege of being able to pose questions to the filmmakers.
The Gold Coast Arts Center (formerly known as the Great Neck Arts Center) offers a stage, a platform, a gallery for the entire spectrum of visual and performance arts and all age-groups, from toddlers to teens to totterers.
This all crystallized at this year’s Gold Coast Arts Center/Gold Coast International Film Festival Gala 2015, held on Oct. 28 at the Tilles Center on the Long Island University campus in Brookville.
The gala, which is the main fundraiser to support the center’s scholarship and outreach programs, also has served to recognize and honor “the musicians, artists, dancers, actors, directors, choreographers, singers, playwrights, poets, writers, painters, sculptors, and filmmakers, whose work illuminates issues, brings joy to our lives, and reminds us of what makes us better people,” Gold Coast Arts Center Executive Director Regina Gil said.
This tradition started 20 years ago, with the awarding of the first Artist of Distinction honor to Pulitzer-Prize winning composer and conductor, Morton Gould, a Great Neck resident, and some years later, film director Francis Ford Coppola (who graduated from Great Neck High).
What does it say that our arts center, over the years, has been able to bring internationally renowned, cultural icons like fashion designer Oleg Cassini, artists James Rosenquist and Larry Rivers, actress Kelli O’Hara, Savion Glover, Melissa Errico, actor Paul Sorvino, Lou Dorfsman, novelist Nelson DeMille, and scores more?
Last year, after scoring a coup in hosting the first commercial screening of Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby,” as a Gold Coast International Film Festival event, with Baz providing insights into his creative process and life experience), his wife and collaborator, Catherine Martin, came from Australia to be last year’s honoree as the Artist of Distinction.
“I think mainly of being a mother of two – it is why Baz and I have supported the Gold Coast Arts Center,” Martin said. “We fundamentally believe in the power of art in people’s lives- culture in its many forms — dance, movie, theater, writing — ways of expressing yourself that allows you to connect with others in a nonviolent, pleasurable way…. I see my parents dedication in exposing us to a world filled with music, art, literature. Support your community. From community, great things grow. I came from a nice suburban community in Australia. I am only here because I was exposed to arts at an early age.”
Having this resource, right in our own neighborhood, is such a luxury, such a privilege.
But it is sad that too many of us take for granted what the arts center has become — a major regional hub for arts education and presentation — and how much it serves to enhance the quality of life we enjoy here, as well as serve as an engine for economic vitality.
Thousands of people come to Great Neck to take classes (even a hip-hop class just for boys, as WABC’s Kristin Thorne noted as the emcee of this year’s Gala award presentations), workshops, visit the gallery (free), hear concerts and lectures.
It’s not just the famous and those who have already established careers of enormous accomplishment who we are privileged to meet – such as this year’s Artist of Distinction, music honoree, Grammy Winner Vince Giordano who has injected new life and appreciation into Big Band music — but the opportunities the arts center provides to those just starting out, and even those who have yet to discover their own talents and interests.
One of the performance series the arts center hosts is the Acoustic Cafe, where young people get an opportunity to be heard. And what has become an annual event, Your Big Break, provides young performers with an opportunity to win professional mentoring, to record and perform in other important venues (it’s like “American Idol” but in a positive, not snarky atmosphere). When you sit in the audience hearing these 14 to 17-year olds perform, you can’t help but think you may well be seeing The Beatles when they were just that age.
It’s not necessarily that we, as parents, necessarily want to pave a path for our children into the arts.
But the fact is that creative expression is part of a person’s physical being – it has to be expressed, and is critical for a child to fully develop their potential. It taps a different way of learning, provides a means to achieving success and self-confidence that might not come through more conventional academic pursuits, and the performance experience — public speaking, self-discipline, following instructions and working as a team with others for example — are important throughout life.
And the arts center provides the opportunities for children to tap into that part of them.
Michael Glickman, president of the Arts Center, at last year’s Gala, put it best when he said, “The arts center opens doors to the future. And so we are working to ensure that we can offer our children opportunities that speak to today and tomorrow. This gala, this honor, the fabulous film festival that will follow, are just a few examples of the richness, complexity and magnitude of our community and offerings presented by this great institution.”
“As a person committed to this community and a proponent of making it possible for the arts to serve as a way to ensure that we safeguard knowledge and ideas, glories and vicissitudes, art and culture, we can look to the arts center and feel good that future generations will know, understand and value the unique place that the arts play in our history and in civilization,” Glickman said.
The arts go beyond an individual’s creative expression, to fostering community and shaping society. Indeed, the very definition of “civilization” revolves around the arts.
“In a world where radical terrorist groups are actually erasing cultural icons, blowing up works of art, architecture, relics of past civilizations that valued their cultural legacy, it is even more important to support our most creative minds, the artists and thinkers,” Gil said at this year’s gala.
The arts are not just expressions of humanity, but make us more humane.
That point was made by Navid Negahban, this year’s honoree as “Artist of Distinction, Film.” Negahban, perhaps better known for playing the villain in “Homeland” is especially proud of a film yet to be released in the United States, but which won five of Israel’s equivalent of our “Oscars.” The film, “Baba Joon,” (which means “Dear Dad”) gives a sensitive portrayal of an Iranian family living in Israel.
“Films help bring us closer together and know each other better,” Negahban said.
Another honoree, Patricia Riggen, awarded the art center’s first ever “Woman of Influence,” used this as a platform to promote more opportunities for women as directors and filmmakers.
“She is an example of what talent and determination can achieve,” Gil said. “We have established this award to honor distinguished women in the arts, who can serve as models for girls as they find their way into leadership positions.”
Riggen’s film, “The 33,” which festival goers had a chance to preview at a special screening before its wide release on Nov. 13, is testimony to the important difference a woman’s perspective can have on such an important subject as the 33 miners who captivated the world during the 69 days they were trapped deep in the ground in Chile.
As Riggen, herself pointed out during this extraordinary Q&A after the screening, she brought a different perspective in how she portrays the human dynamics of survival.
“I think if this movie had been directed by a guy, the emphasis would have been on the technical rescue and violence” during their captivity. Instead, Riggen fleshes out the more complicated personal dynamics, the emotions.
At the same time the film, while not a heavy-handed polemic, is a timely expose of a social dynamic that is being repeated around the world, in the way powerful corporations and complicit politicians reduce human beings to expendable cogs in a machine -like in the Massey mining disaster (and the criminal case against ex-CEO Don Blankenship) and a class action lawsuit underway in South Africa brought against 32 mining companies by miners suffering from incurable lung disease.
The arts offer a different way to learn and understand. A way to get out of our own narrow, parochial, provincial bubbles to appreciate a new perspective.
It is fairly remarkable how the arts center/film festival has provided our community with access to important ideas.
Last year’s festival organized a special screening of “A Voice Among The Silent: The Legacy of James G. McDonald,” a film by Shuli Eshel, about James McDonald’s efforts to warn the world of Hitler’s Final Solution, and his attempts to rescue Jews from the Nazis, and who became the first U.S. Ambassador to Israel. We were privileged to have an opportunity to hear from not only from Eshel, the filmmaker, but McDonald’s daughter, who offered extraordinary insights into her father’s life and that history. (The film will air on WNET, Channel THIRTEEN on Sunday November 8 at 11 p.m. and Thursday November 12 at 10:30 p.m..)
Another film in the festival, “Above and Beyond,” produced by Nancy Spielberg, told a fascinating, little-known true story of ragtag band of Jewish-American pilots who volunteered to fight for Israel in the War of Independence and turned the tide of the war, preventing the annihilation of Israel at the very moment of its birth.
The festival brought Paul Kaye, a Navy SEAL who worked with many of the pilots during this momentous period in history and bore witness to those perilous times, for the Q&A that followed. It was riveting.
The arts center does not just bring culture, knowledge and a bigger worldview to us. It also brings the world to us, often introducing our community for the first time. A significant number of the audience for the film festival come from out of town.
“Most places initiate a film festival are a destination because constabulary understands will attract out-of-towners,” Gil remarked. “Sundance was a two by nothing ski bum place until its film festival.”
The arts center and the film festival are turning our town into a destination (the Long Island Rail Road is even offering packages to the film festival). It puts us on the map, and that means people see the quality of life here, perhaps to come to live or to set up businesses.
Indeed, our town and Nassau County have become very popular for film and TV shoots, which Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano likes to tout as generating revenue and creating jobs.
“The Gold Coast International Film Festival continues to offer residents an opportunity to enjoy arts and entertainment, while also providing those in the industry with insight to the wonderful filming locations Nassau County has to offer,” Mangano said. “The film and television production industry is providing employment opportunities as well as strengthening our economy.”
Mangano has targeted film production as a key part of economic development for the county, pointing to the repurposing of the Grumman facility in Bethpage, once an aerospace facility, into film production studios. His office estimated that In 2010, the film industry generated $85 million in economic impact for Nassau County.
“The Gold Coast Arts Center plays such a vital part in our community,” said North Hempstead Supervisor Judi Bosworth. “It’s a source of revitalization, it brings the community together. Events like the Gold Coast International Film Festival spurs economic development. It brings people into all areas of the town, not just to see films, but to go to restaurants and shops. It serves as a catalyst for people to know to town. It’s so important to support the arts in every way we can. There are Tribeca, Hamptons, Sundance but I think GCIFF is up there with all of them – you can come to North Hempstead to see this kind of quality.”
Jon Kaiman, the former North Hempstead supervisor who was instrumental in forging the partnership between the town and the arts center and supported the film festival from its inception, “The idea all along was to create something that is recognized not just throughout town, but beyond, that can feature larger community and take advantage of all the arts we have to offer resident s- quality of life. Our community has great respect for arts and culture.”
The festival, he said, “is an engine for economic development ‚ every dollar goes round and round to local businesses and, through sales taxes, into government services. It’s the multiplier effect. “
Nationally, in 2010, direct spending by nonprofit arts organizations and audiences amounted to $135.2 billion, supporting 4.1 million jobs, $87.7 billion, in resident household income, $6.1 billion in local government revenue, $6.7 billion in state government revenue, and $10.0 billion in federal government revenue.
At Long Island Vision summits, each year, there are presentations on how arts organizations, such as The Space in Westbury, are key to the revitalization of villages, and keeping young people on Long Island, instead of moving to Brooklyn, which itself has become a live-arts hub.
“It’s wonderful to see the festival continuing and growing and really becoming the international event it has become,” Kaiman said. “It also fosters community. When people look at great place to live, look for cultural life and respect and awareness for the arts is an indication of a mature community. We have that in our town. How great to be able to take advantage.”
“No place better serves the youth of North Hempstead than Gold Coast Arts Center — acting, dancing, sculpting, and this film festival, which was literally birthed at the arts center,” added Kim Kaiman, executive director of the North Hempstead Business, Tourism & Development Corporation. “It brings a sense of cohesiveness to North Hempstead.
The 5th Anniversary of the festival will feature over 60 films and dozens of filmmakers at screenings and events in seven different venues throughout the Town of North Hempstead, including Soundview Cinemas in Port Washington, the Bow Tie Cinemas in Great Neck, Port Washington, Manhasset and Roslyn, the Gold Coast Arts Center in Great Neck and the campus of LIU Post.
The Festival kicks off with an intimate conversation with award winning writer, director and producer Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me”) being held on the campus of LIU Post on November 9, and will include a special screening of Spurlock’s new short film “Crafted.”
Other filmmakers scheduled to attend include award-winning director/producer/screenwriter, award winning filmmakers Michael Cuesta (Exec. Producer Homeland), Rick Goldsmith, Yael Melamede and Andrew Horn; WNBA superstar Chamique Holdsclaw; and several members of the band Twisted Sister who will join us for the US premiere of a new film, Top Spin.
Films this year showcase Hollywood’s best actors including Richard Gere, Oliver Platt, Rene Russo, Jason Sudeikis, Rebecca Hall, Christopher Walken, Amber Heard and many more industry stars. Award-winning films from the world’s most prestigious festivals (Cannes, Toronto, Sundance, Tribeca) will be screened, plus more than 25 short films, with Q&As with visiting shorts filmmakers. Once again free tickets are being offered to all screenings for veterans and current military personnel, courtesy of 1-800-Flowers.com.
Take advantage of this jewel we have in our own backyard. Movies are actually selling out already, so plan out your festival itinerary and purchase tickets in advance.
For a full list of films and for information on tickets, visit www.goldcoastfilmfestival.org.
