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Link expands Serling festival's reach BY GEORGE BASLER BINGHAMTON -- The Rod Serling Video Festival, which began 10 years ago as strictly a Broome County event, is expanding nationwide in the coming year. The festival has reached an agreement with International Baccalaureate North America to accept student-produced videos from International Baccalaureate schools throughout North America, Binghamton City School District officials said. This means entries could come from as far away as California, Canada and the Caribbean. "This provides an opportunity for the Rod Serling festival to go international and get our name out even further," said Margaret McGarry, coordinator of the fine arts program at Binghamton High School, which also is named for Serling. IB is a comprehensive, two-year, pre-college curriculum offered in close to 1,600 schools worldwide, including 650 to 700 in North America. The Serling video festival is the brainchild of Lawrence Kassan, director of special projects for the city school district, who began it to encourage the creative use of video by students K-12. Kassan worked with the Serling estate to receive permission to use the name and picture of The Twilight Zone creator, an award-winning dramatist who was a graduate of Binghamton city schools. Kassan also worked to recruit local sponsors because the school district, while supporting the festival, provides no local tax money. The 2005 festival received close to 150 entries from students across New York state, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Kassan said one of his goals has been to keep the festival growing and solicit entries nationally, and even internationally. Over the summer, he went to the International Baccalaureate North America headquarters in New York City, along with McGarry and Binghamton High Principal Albert Penna, to discuss having the IB program cooperate with the video festival. The cooperation is logical because Binghamton High offers the IB program, Kassan said. Vestal High School also has an IB program. Kassan sees the cooperation as "a win-win proposition." The festival and Binghamton High School get a way to promote themselves throughout North America. At the same time, IB students get a chance to showcase their video work, said Megan Shade, regional communications manager for IB North America. "It's a good thing to promote and sustain the legacy of Rod Serling," Penna said. Starting in 2006, the video festival will have two divisions. Students in non-IB schools will continue to submit entries for competition in seven categories, including best use of computer animation, best of show and best directing. Students in IB schools will submit entries for a division that will be judged separately. The festival will present three separate awards -- gold, silver and bronze -- to the IB entries. "We're not taking away from the basic umbrella of the Serling festival with adding a division for IB entries," Kassan said. The expansion of the video festival is a good thing to give it more recognition, said Timothy White, a 2005 Binghamton High graduate who is now studying film and video animation at Rochester Institute of Technology. White won an honorable mention in the 2005 Rod Serling Video Festival and called the experience worthwhile because students can receive good feedback for their work. "This (the expansion) gives Binghamton a spot on the map," he said. How many entries the Serling festival will receive for the IB division remains to be seen, Kassan said. While between 650 and 700 schools in North America have IB programs, not all offer video production classes. Entries for the coming year's festival must be postmarked by May 1, 2006. For more information, contact Kassan at 762-8202. |