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Health & Fitness

The Hudson Valley Writers' Center to Honor Stephen Apkon, Jacob Burns Film Center Founder

The timing couldn’t be more appropriate. Stephen Apkon, stepping down as executive director of the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, will be honored for his book The Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens and his 15 years of JBFC leadership at the Silver Anniversary Celebration of the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center on Thursday, October 3, 2013.

Melanie Hulse, the writers’ center’s program director, will introduce Apkon along with Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Robert Kinloch Massie as 2013 co-honorees during a ceremonial dinner program at the Abigail Kirsch at Tappan Hill Mansion in Tarrytown. 

Also during the evening’s festivities, executive director Jo Ann Clark said, Delauné Michel, founder of Spoken Interludes, will be recognized for her contributions to literary awareness. The evening’s agenda includes cocktails, dinner, silent and live auctions, "Tommy T Entertainment" with a band playing music from the 1940s to the present, and dancing.

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Apkon who founded the Jacob Burns Film Center in 1998 leaves after having served as its executive director since its inception; he will remain on the job until a successor is found. Phillips Oppenheim, a nonprofit-company executive search firm, has been retained to help in the hunt for a replacement. 

Apkon will head a new, nonprofit media production company not affiliated with JBFC but likely to collaborate with it from time to time. His first project is producing a film about the Hudson Valley by Andy Young and Susan Todd called Pondemonium.

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Apkon's book The Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens was published by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux in 2012. The website for this book notes, “In The Age of the Image, Apkon draws on the history of literacy, on the science of how storytelling works on the human brain, and on the value of literacy in real-world situations, and argues that now is the time to transform the way we teach, create, and communicate so that we can all step forward together into a rich and stimulating future.” See http://www.theageoftheimage.com/ www.theageoftheimage.com

The film center

The film center's building opened as the Rome Theater in 1925; it was renovated and expanded in 2001 becoming an 18,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art facility housing a 250-seat theater, a 136-seat theater and a 70-seat screening room.

The name change to Jacob Burns Film Center was prompted by a $1.5 million contribution to the building fund from The Jacob Burns Foundation, a provider of grants for several not-for-profit organizations devoted to the arts. [The foundation was created by a philanthropist named Jacob Burns, who was the founder of a company that merged with Revlon, a prominent attorney and director of the New York County Lawyers’ Association, and a trustee of George Washington and Yeshiva Universities. Burns died in 1993.]

In 2009, JBFC opened a Media Arts Lab down the street from the film center. Its facilities include a sound stage, a recording studio, an isolation booth, a foley room, an animation room, fifteen editing suites, four workshop areas, and a 60-seat screening room for classes in animation, cinematography, editing and sound design.

Apkon's background

Apkon grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts, graduated from Georgetown University in 1983 and received an MBA degree from Harvard Business School in 1986. From 1988 to 1992, he was a principal at Odyssey Partners, LP, a Manhattan-based investment partnership primarily involved in management buyouts in technology, retail and other industries. 

For the next seven years, he was a general partner at Crossroads Partners, EEC, a private merchant banking partnership based in Westchester County. He was an associate from 1986 to 1988 in the Merger and Acquisitions Department of Goldman Sachs & Co. in Manhattan.

He is on the boards of World Cinema Foundation and Advancing Human Rights, and is a member of the Sundance Art House Convergence Leadership Team and the Creative Coalition Entertainment Industry’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Education. He serves as an advisory board member for Teatown Lake Reservation and at one time served on the advisory board of World Hunger Year (now known as WhyHunger).

Apkon, his wife Lisa Hertz Apkon, and their three children live in Pleasantville, NY.

About the dinner and participants

A coming article will provide more information about co-honoree Robert Kinloch Massie, the author of Peter the Great: His Life and World.

Recognition of Delauné Michel for her contributions to literary awareness was previously covered. See Patch article “The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center to Salute Achievements of Spoken Interludes Founder Delauné Michel."

The program on October 3 at Tappan Hill Mansion will begin with cocktails at 6 p.m. 

Tickets for this event cost $250 per person, all but $50 of which is tax-deductible. The price includes the open-bar reception, participation in all scheduled events of the evening, dinner and both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.

Items to be offered at the auctions are expected to include resort travel vouchers, vacation home occupancies, restaurant dining certificates, arts and crafts, and tickets for sporting events.

The Jacob Burns Film Center is a not-for-profit organization located at 364 Manville Road, Pleasantville, NY. For membership and class information and to see the film calendar or purchase tickets, visit website: www.burnsfilmcenter.org

Spoken Interludes is a literary salon that conducts author reading/dinner programs. More information about it and a schedule of author readings can be found at www.spokeninterludes.com 

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, book publishers, 18 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011, 212-741-6900. www.us.macmillan.com

Tappan Hill Mansion, where Mark Twain once lived, is secluded on a picturesque estate at 81 Highland Avenue (GPS address: 200 Gunpowder Lane), Tarrytown, 914-631-3030, www.abigailkirsch.com

The Hudson Valley Writer’s Center is a nonprofit organization headquartered at 300 Riverside Drive, Sleepy Hollow (at the Phillipse Manor Metro-North train station). For more information about the dinner or the center, call 914-332-5953 or visit website: www.writerscenter.org

The photo of Stephen Apkon was taken by Lynda Shenkman Curtis and provided by the Jacob Burns Film Center. The photo of the Jacob Burns Film Center was taken by Jerry Eimbinder, the author of the article.

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