VPA’s Owen Shapiro has film accepted into two festivals

Wednesday, April 13, 2011, By Erica Blust

Owen Shapiro, professor of film in the School of Art and Design’s Department of Transmedia, had “Vinyl and Red Lips,” a 22-minute experimental video that he completed in January with Pedro Cuperman, associate professor in SU’s College of Arts and Sciences and editor of Point of Contact, accepted into the Athens International Film Festival (late April) and the San Gio Video Festival (July).

The video, which was edited by film alumna KC Duggan ’04, is about the history and mythology of the Tango and features Tere Paniagua, managing director of Point of Contact Gallery.

Shapiro is co-founder and artistic director of the Syracuse International Film Festival. He is an award-winning experimental documentary filmmaker, having made more than 30 films and a dozen videos on a wide range of subjects. His films have been honored by the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris and showcased and won awards at film festivals around the world, including events in Edinburgh, Athens, Hong Kong, Israel, England, Germany, France, and throughout the United States. In 1987, he was honored with a Fulbright Fellowship to be a guest professor at Tel-Aviv University, Israel. He earned a master of fine arts degree from Brooklyn College.