Joan Stein, SOA' 00

Joan Stein, SOA'00, a filmmaker who entered the Columbia School of the Arts with no previous film training, has received an Academy Award nomination for best short film for her master's thesis film, One Day Crossing. Also nominated was her screenwriter and schoolmate Christina Lazaridi, SOA'98.

They join fellow Columbians James Schamus, an associate professor in the School of the Arts film division, Gail Lerner, SOA'96, Colin Campbell, SOA'96 and Tan Dun, DMA '93, as nominees.

Schamus, executive producer of 10-time nominated Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, received two Oscar nominations: for best screenplay from previously published material and best song. Dun, who received his doctorate in music composition at Columbia, was nominated for best score and best song, also for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Lerner and Campbell, both graduates of the SOA Theatre Arts Division, were nominated along with Stein for best short film (live action), for Seraglio.

Winners will be announced at the 73rd annual Academy Awards on March 25th.

Joan Stein's, SOA' 00 master's thesis film One Day Crossing will contend for an Academy Award

Stein entered the graduate film program in the School of the Arts with a business degree; she credits Lewis Cole, a professor of film and former chair of the film division, for being a strong mentor who helped develop her talent as a filmmaker. "Lewis took on the project and helped us turn it into something really special," said Stein. "He pushed us to make it better. That's one of the reasons to go to film school."

Stein also met and began collaborating with her screenwriter, Lazaridi, in a Columbia class entitled "Directing Actors," taught by Lenore DeKoven.

Although Stein expressed amazement over her Academy Award nomination, her professors in the film division did not.

"Those of us who have taught or worked with Joan are thrilled but not surprised by this latest honor," said Dan Kleinman, chair of the film division and professor of film. "When she arrived here, she had never shot a foot of film or video, but she has become a director of enormous talent. One Day Crossing is one of the best short films I have ever seen."

One Day Crossing has already been awarded numerous prizes and was screened in eleven film festivals. Last year, in addition to the best film award at the Polo Ralph Lauren Columbia University Film Festival, where it debuted, it received the gold medal for best narrative film at the 27th annual Student Academy Awards and the Directors Guild of America's Student Film Award. The latter two honors made the film eligible for Academy Award consideration.

One Day Crossing tells the story of a young family living in Budapest during the last phase of World War II. At that time Hungarian Jews were terrorized not only by the "Nazi foreign villains" but also the "Arrow Cross"—Hungary's indigenous Nazi movement. The 25-minute film movingly recreates the world and moral choices confronted by Teresa, a young woman who poses as a Christian to protect her family.

Stein conceived of One Day Crossing as a collaborative project and won the 1999 Polo Ralph Lauren Development Award (a $10,000 grant given in conjunction with the annual Columbia University Film Festival) to develop the idea.

Stein and Lazaridi conducted numerous interviews with Holocaust survivors and did extensive research into the period as preparation for writing the project. The film (black-and-white, in Hungarian with English subtitles) was shot in Budapest with an international production team and Hungarian actors on an eight-day schedule.

Stein said "One Day Crossing has great personal resonance for me because it is inspired by experiences of my family. The recognition it has received confirms my belief that it is important for filmmakers to choose subjects that they care deeply about."

Both of Stein's parents and members of her extended family survived World War II in Budapest. "Although the film is a work of fiction, the story behind it stems from experiences very close to my heart," said Stein. "I never really understood the inexpressible shadow that the Holocaust cast over me my whole life. The film is an attempt to make some sense of the experience for those who survived and those who didn't."

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has been nominated for 10 Oscars, including best picture

James Schamus, who divides his time between teaching film theory and criticism at the School of the Arts and producing and writing films, is executive producer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which is his seventh collaboration with director Ang Lee, who was nominated for best direction. (The team's earlier movies include The Ice Storm and Sense and Sensibility.) Set in ancient China and described as a martial arts film for the art house audience, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has captured both critical praise and a popular following, breaking box office records for foreign films in the United States. The movie, which is in Mandarin, recently surpassed the record set by Life Is Beautiful to become America's most popular foreign language film ever.

The script is adapted from a 70-year-old, five-volume Chinese novel by Wang Du Lu. Schamus' nomination for best adapted screenplay is shared with his Chinese co-writers Wang Hui Ling and Tsai Kuo Jung.

"The script went back and forth over computer and fax like a ping-pong ball between continents," said Schamus. "I would write something in English, send it over, it would be translated into Chinese and they would rewrite it and send it back." He would then reverse the process.

This is not the first time Schamus has collaborated with Chinese writers; he did so on previous Ang Lee films The Wedding Banquet (written with Neil Peng and Lee) and Eat Drink Man Woman (written with Wang Hui Ling and Lee). But in those earlier cases the material was contemporary.

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with its historical setting, posed more of a challenge," Schamus said. "We had to try to find a space between which these cultures could communicate."

The final product reflected a true collaboration, much more than the usual Hollywood shared writing credit, which usually indicates that one writer's material has been rewritten by another.

"This film could not have been written by any one of us," said Shamus. "The great thing about having all three involved was it led to a story that transcended cultural barriers."

Schamus' nomination in the best song category represents new territory for him. A Love Before Time is the first popular song he has written.

"It was the most difficult writing of my life," he said. "I had to start taking the genre much more seriously. Prior to this, as a professorial type, my role models were Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. I began to study Barbara Streisand and Gloria Estefan."

Tan Dun has become a world-renowned composer since receiving his doctorate from Columbia. He has been a friend of director Ang Lee since the two were college students in New York City.

Both Lerner and Campbell studied theatre directing at Columbia. Their film Seraglio tells the story of an unhappy housewife who becomes an unlikely seductress after finding an anonymous love letter tucked inside a cabbage.