10th Annual SUNY Wide Film Festival April 9–10

Purchase is proud to host the SUNYWide Film Festival (SWFF) April 9 and 10, featuring a  distinguished panel of judges, special guests, and an esteemed keynote speaker. Due to COVID safety precautions, the festival’s events will also be live-streamed or virtual, in addition to offering limited attendance for certain events and screenings.

SWFF was launched in 2009 as an opportunity to showcase the cinematic work of students and faculty from the SUNY system. Now in its tenth year, the festival is one of the top student film festivals in the Northeast.

This is the first year it will be held at Purchase, led by our acclaimed School of Film and Media Studies. In addition to films, the festival will also hold a screenplay competition for the first time.

The judges have selected 49 finalists from across 15 SUNY colleges. For a full list of finalists, films, screenplays, and jury bios visit the SWFF website. 

Bombshell screenwriter Charles Randolph will deliver the keynote address on April 9. Randolph was named the recipient of the Writers Guild of America West’s 2020 Paul Selvin Award in recognition of his script for Bombshell, which focuses on sexual harassment at Fox News. Randolph is known for his powerful screenplays including The Life of David Gale (2003), The Interpreter (2005), Love & Other Drugs (2010), and The Big Short (2015), which won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Acclaimed alumni of Purchase College’s film program, Hal Hartley ’84 and Chris Wedge ’81 will serve as President of the Jury and Executive Director of the festival respectively.

Hal Hartley is an American filmmaker, writer, director, producer, and composer who has made twelve feature films since 1988. Popularly associated with the American independent filmmaking scene of the early nineties, he wrote and directed such films as No Such Thing (2001) and Fay Grim (2006). Hartley has won numerous awards at Cannes and Sundance, and has had his work shown in retrospectives around the world.

Chris Wedge is an Oscar® winning film director, producer, and co-founder of Blue Sky Studios. Beginning his career as a stop-motion animator, Wedge later joined MAGI/SynthaVision, where he was one of the principal animators for the groundbreaking Disney movie Tron (1982).

Wedge wrote and directed Blue Sky’s first film, the touching short, Bunny (1998), which won an Academy Award® for best animated short film. He went on to direct Blue Sky’s first feature length film, Ice Age (2002), which was nominated for an Academy Award® for best animated feature film, and launched one of the most successful worldwide animation franchises in history. He then directed Robots (2005), Epic (2013), and Monster Trucks (2017).

Judges will include distinguished individuals working in multiple aspects of the film industry including filmmaker and producer Daniel Armando; film producer Cecilia Mejia; costume designer Lisa Padovani; and director Jason Silverman. Full bios for all the judges can be found on the festival website.