Jacob Burns Film Center Opens One of Nation's Largest Education Centers Focused on Redefining Literacy for a Media-Rich Age

Jacob Burns Film Center Opens One of Nation's Largest Education Centers Focused on Redefining Literacy for a Media-Rich Age

New 27,000-square-foot Media Arts Lab offers programs advancing K-12 school curricula into the digital age

PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y., Dec. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- The Jacob Burns Film Center (JBFC) announced today the grand opening of its new Media Arts Lab-and along with it, JBFC's emergence as the country's largest state-of-the-art film and education center dedicated to advancing a new definition of literacy.

Funded by a $20-million Campaign for 21st Century Education, the Lab will focus on teaching students how to effectively communicate in a global culture increasingly dominated by digital technology, visual text, and imagery. The 27,000-square-foot facility houses the latest technology for producing visual and digital media and is equipped with 16 editing suites, a recording studio, a soundstage, a 60-seat screening room, an animation studio, a large Center Studio, and four small studios.

"What we're trying to do is transform the notion of literacy," said Stephen Apkon, founder and executive director of JBFC. "We live in a world where presidential candidates use web videos to announce their candidacies and millions of people across the world upload videos to YouTube every day to share their stories and communicate their messages. Our education system must reflect this reality by equipping students with the communications skills and technologies they need to master, regardless of profession, to succeed in this media-rich age. The new Media Arts Lab will be a model for this evolution."

"The most effective communicators in the 21st Century will be those who are as fluent in multimedia language and visual imagery as they are with the written and spoken word," said Gary Knell, president and chief executive officer of Sesame Workshop and long-time JBFC member. "The Media Arts Lab will help young people develop that fluency. What's more, by teaching children to become visually literate, it will make it easier for them to communicate across cultural and geographic borders and will provide them with the tools they need to compete in an increasingly competitive global marketplace."

The JBFC developed its forward-thinking curricula in collaboration with a team of international educators and professional filmmakers. School-based programs have been effectively replicated, reaching far beyond the JBFC campus to nearly 60,000 students in the tri-state area and abroad.

In January 2009, the Lab will become home to dozens of filmmaking and cinema studies classes for kids, teens, adults, and families during the day, after school, in the evenings, and on weekends.

Courses being offered to schools and the public at the Media Arts Lab in 2009 include:

-- See * Hear * Feel * Film, which has been taught since 2001, teaches critical viewing, listening skills and writing techniques through the visual medium of film to third graders.

-- Animation: Minds in Motion!, a project-based learning program that was created in 2002 in which fourth-grade students integrate their language arts, math, technology, and art skills with the production of a short animated film.

-- Reel Change, a production experience focused on short films that address social issues and aim to effect change.

-- Digital Journalism, offering training in a field that now incorporates filming and editing and challenges the journalist to act as a one-person news "crew".

-- Crafting the Documentary, which traces the history of nonfiction films while introducing the building blocks of documentary storytelling through hands-on production exercises.

Several of the new school curricula initiatives currently in development include:

Film and Early Literacy, a multi-sensory curriculum, focusing on movement, sound, and storytelling and integrating early childhood literacy strategies for students in pre-K through Grade 2; and Teaching and Technology in the Digital Age, an intensive two-year professional development program preparing educators to integrate digital filmmaking tools into daily classroom content.

The JBFC, located on a 47,500 sq. foot, three-building campus in the center of Pleasantville, just 30 miles outside of New York City, was founded in 2001 with a dual mission of film exhibition and education. The organization's groundbreaking education programs enhance and modernize traditional curricula as well as equip students from third grade through college level and beyond with skills needed to compete in a world dominated by visual media and 21st century technology.

In 2007, the Jacob Burns Film Center received the highest ranking possible for a New York area not-for-profit arts and culture organization from Contribute New York magazine.

To learn more about the Jacob Burns Film Center, visit http://www.burnsfilmcenter.org/. To view a selection of work from various JBFC education programs visit http://www.youtube.com/user/burnsfilmcenter.

Source: Jacob Burns Film Center

CONTACT: Denise Treco of Jacob Burns Film Center, +1-914-773-7663,
ext. 415, dtreco@burnsfilmcenter.org; or Sarah Levinson Rothman of 42West,
+1-646-254-6030, Sarah.rothman@42west.net, for Jacob Burns Film Center

Web site: http://www.burnsfilmcenter.org/

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