Gen Art Film Festival

The Gen Art Film Festival was founded in 1996 to showcase the work of emerging American Independent filmmakers and is curated with an emphasis on highlighting the diversity of their visions and talents. The theme of the festival is "7 Premieres. 7 Parties". Unlike most festivals, The Gen Art Film Festival selects only seven features and seven shorts. Each night, a feature and short is paired, and an after party follows the screening. The Festival Director is Jeff Abramson.

History

The company was founded in 1993 with Melissa Neumann and brothers Ian and Stefan Gerard. In its infancy the company worked out of Ian’s NYU law school dorm room with a fax machine and one laptop. Melissa, a 23-year-old analyst at Meryl Lynch grew up in a family of art collectors and had the ability to seek out talented artists. Stefan was 22 at the time and worked in publishing. Stefan and his brother did have organizational and administrative experience. The company’s roots started with Ian Gerard who attended Vassar College at the time and was involved with many people who majored in fine arts. He noticed first hand that many of his colleges and other emerging artists during the 1990s had difficulties showcasing their talents in the art galleries of New York City. He felt that they were not getting any opportunities. Ian also noticed that there were a lot of young people with disposable income, who wanted to attain art but could not afford to buy art from the SoHo art galleries. This is when Ian began experimenting with the idea of bringing together these young artists and young people whom would support their peers by buying their art work for decent prices. He put the two groups together and started the organization, which was first called generational biases.

Ian continued working on generational biases from his law school dorm room at NYU. It was a difficult time, but they didn’t give up on their mission. Since this was a start-up, he knew that he had to attempt to get some sort of creditability. The first thing Ian did was put together an advisory board of blue chip artists that had had major successes in the 70's and 80's, that would want to give back to the art community as well as help the next generation of artists. They got close to twenty people, mostly artists and some gallery owners and dealers, to sit on the advisory board. The establishment of an advisory board with well-known members of the art community immediately got them over the obstacle of being a company run by three people between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-four.

With the help of renowned photographers, painters, performing artists and other artists the company was able to create their first successful fundraiser to raise money for the company. Over 500 people attended the benefit, most of them were friends of the Gerard brothers, and luckily they were well connected with the New York social scene. The fundraiser showcased four emerging artists and the event was written up in the New York Times styles section.

The company expanded into fashion in 1995 when Ian got a call from a young emerging accessories designer who had attended one of the art exhibitions. She told him that the fashion industry is just as difficult to break into as the art industry, especially because it costs a lot of money to produce a fashion show. Ian realized that she was correct and decided to use excess gallery space to do a one night fashion show for emerging fashion designers to see how it would turn out. Also that summer, a Gen Art office opened up in Los Angeles California.

In 1996, Gen Art hired a young film professional, Paul Gachot, to create and direct its first film festival. Also around this time, a third Gen Art office was opened in San Francisco. Ian worked at a corporate law from upon his graduation from law school until 1997, only working on Gen Art on the side. During this time, Stephan and Melissa mainly ran Gen Art. Stephan quit the company and went into advertising and Ian became the CEO, working full time at Gen Art bringing in Adam Walden in 1998, who is still the company’s President today.

In the beginning of 2003 Gen Art was still contemplating the Heineken deal, when some venture capitalists came along and offered to invest in the company if they became a for profit company. While the venture capitalist deal fell through they had already given Gen Art $100,000 dollars they could not legally take back, so they took this money signed the deal with Heineken and they were now officially a for-profit company. Now they have the not-for-profit side, which is the Advisory Board whom scout for emerging artists and the for-profit side, which is all about the sponsors and throwing exciting events. The company went from hosting 6-7 parties a month in various cities to 100 events a month in various cities. During this time Gen Art expanded, because with the increase of events they were being asked to do, they needed more help in making expansion a reality. New offices in Miami and Chicago opened. This created a new structure for Gen Art in 2003, which has remained the same until now.

Films

2006

Feature / Short
* Dreamland / Wet
* Wristcutters / She She She She's a Bombshell
* F*CK / This Morning
* Behind the Mask / At the Beach
* Shut Up and Sing / Intervention
* Neverwas / The Passage of Mrs. Clabash
* Live Free or Die / The Shirt

2005

Feature / Short
* Loverboy / The Act
* It's All Gone Pete Tong (Grand Jury Winner, Audience Award Winner) / Wow and Flutter
* On the Outs / Victoria Para Chino (Grand Jury Winner)
* Up For Grabs / Dog Eat Dog
* Four Eyed Monsters / Allison
* Southern Belles / The Butcher and the Housewife
* Standing Still / Our Time is Up

2004

Feature / Short
* SAVED! (Grand Jury Winner) / Save Virgil
* Nobody Needs to Known / Damian Loeb: In the Public Domain
* Sexless / Broken Condom
* Milwaukee, Minnesota / Chinese Dream
* Dear Pillow / Pretty Dead Girl
* My Date with Drew (Audience Award Winner) / (Audience Award Winner)
* Knots / Gardening Tips for Housewives

2003

Feature / Short
* Kiss The Bride / Bun-Bun
* Five Years / Broken
* The New Suit / Jeff Farnsworth
* Speedo / On Six Mile Pond
* West Bank Brooklyn / The Last Attack Of the Beast
* Assisted Living (Grand Jury Winner) / Tom Hits His Head
* XX/XY / Blissfield

2002

Feature / Short
* Love In the Time Of Money / The Parlor
* Face (Audience Award Winner) / Firebug
* Tattoo: A Love Story / JT Walker
* Hell House / Mean People Suck
* On_Line / Member
* Solitude / Joe and Charlie at the Ranch
* Snipes / The Clearing

2001

Feature / Short
* Just A Kiss / The Office Party
* The American Astronaut / Metropopular
* American Chai / World Record Guy
* Welcome to Death Row / Bullet in the Brain
* Margarita Happy Hour / Helicopter
* Amy's Orgasm / Bed
* The Chateau / Offside

2000

Feature / Short
* DROPPING OUT / DAS CLOWN
* I'LL TAKE YOU THERE / SIDEWALKERS
* WHAT HAPPENED TO TULLY / G
* GOAT ON FIRE AND SMILING FISH / THIS GUY IS FALLING
* THE OPERATOR / FALLING
* PLAYING MONA LISA / THE INDESCRIBLE NTH
* URBANIA / THINGS TO REMEMBER ABOUT DAUMIER

External links

* [http://www.genart.org/ Gen Art - Official Site]
* [http://www.genartpulse.com/lx.html Gen Art Event Video]