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Tim Sheehy
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Tim Sheehy, a graduate film student in Columbia's School of the Arts, has won the 1999 Sundance Channel and Time Warner Cable short filmmaking contest for his film Turnstile.
Shot in one day at Zanny's Cafe on 108th and Columbus, Turnstile was Sheehy's second-year film for the Columbia program. The 6-1/2-minute, 35-mm film examines a brief interaction between three young people; Sheehy describes it as a "concentrated moment, shot on one location, taking a simple incident and elaborating on it."
The award confers the following: Turnstile will show for two years on the Sundance Channel (30-40 times a year), both in the program of short films called "Short Stops," and between feature films. It will also be presented during the month of February at The Screening Room, an art cinema on Varick Street in Greenwich Village, preceding regular features.
The public exposure these screenings bring is the main benefit of the award, Sheehy says. There is a modest payment associated with the Sundance Channel broadcasts, and because the contest was co-sponsored by Joe Boxer, the manufacturer of boxer shorts, a component of the prize is a one-year supply of boxer shorts (365 pairs).
Sheehy previously received two other awards for Turnstile: the Grand Marnier Fellowship in conjunction with the New York Film Festival and the Outstanding Student Filmmaker Award sponsored by i-Film at the Shorts International Film Festival. Their combined cash value, about $7,000, has helped him break even on the expense of making the film.
Sheehy has received interest from motion picture production companies such as Miramax, which have asked to see Turnstile, but he doesn't have a feature deal yet.
"They're just saying to keep in touch and let them see the next film I make," he said.
That next project will be his MFA thesis film, which he will shoot this spring. While Turnstile took a brief incident and expanded it, Sheehy plans to do the converse for his thesis film--to take a larger story and compress it. "It's about a man in his 60s who attempts to get into the Guinness Book of World Records," he says.
Sheehy, who came to Columbia with a degree in anthropology from Princeton, said about his decision to enter the Film Division at Columbia's School of the Arts, "The cliched advice about film school you hear is: 'Don't go, just take your money and make films.' But when I look at the films I'm making now, I like them a lot more than what I'd be making if I hadn't entered the program. You end up defining and refining your own style, both through encouragement from, and in opposition to, professors and the other students."
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