Academy Award-winning filmmaker Chris Wedge is next guest of Syracuse Symposium on Nov. 1

Wednesday, October 25, 2006, By News Staff

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Chris Wedge is next guest of Syracuse Symposium on Nov. 1October 25, 2006Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

Award-winning filmmaker Chris Wedge will bring his perspective on the magic of animation to the 2006 Syracuse Symposium, “Imagination,” presented by Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences, on Wednesday, Nov. 1. The event is co-sponsored by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Office of Electronic Media Communications.

Wedge will discuss the animation process and his work beginning at noon in Studio A of the Newhouse II building. He will also share excerpts from his films. The event is free and open to the public; paid parking is available in the University’s visitor pay lots.

As an Oscar-winning director and co-founder of the White Plains-based Blue Sky Studios, Wedge is the driving force behind the company’s high standard of storytelling and character animation. He directed Blue Sky’s first two all-computer-generated animated feature films, “Ice Age,” released in 2002 and nominated for an Oscar, and “Robots,” released in 2005. He was executive producer of “Ice Age: The Meltdown,” released this past March.

Wedge’s Oscar-winning animated short film, “Bunny” (1998), set new cinematic standards in the computer-generated imagery community. He began his career as a stop-motion animator and later joined MAGI/SynthaVision, where he was one of the principal animators for the groundbreaking Disney movie “TRON” (1982). He has also directed character animation sequences for numerous feature films and television commercials.

The Syracuse Symposium is a semester-long intellectual and artistic festival that celebrates interdisciplinary thinking, imagination and creation. This year’s theme is “Imagination.” For more information on symposium events, visit http://symposium.syr.edu. Upcoming speakers include poet and musician Joy Harjo (Nov. 9) and theoretical physicist Lisa Randall (Nov. 29).