About the Long Island Film Festival
Established in 1983, the Long Island Film Festival is the first annual Island-wide competitive film festival of its kind to stage public screenings and champion the creative, visionary and storytelling talents of both professional and student filmmakers from both America and abroad. This makes the LIFF the longest running film festival on Long Island. The handful of host venues that presented the Festival’s screening program and special events for the first edition included the Cinema Arts Center, Parish Art Museum in Southampton, Inter-Media Arts Center and some area colleges.In addition to the public screenings, prizes and recognition awards, the Festival facilitated the broadcast of selected winners over cable television stations, and presented selected films/videos to the community at large through an exhibition in conjunction with Long Island’s Cooperative Extension Library System.
The LIFF would broaden and continue the journey to venue locations that included Guild Hall/John Drew Theater in East Hampton,Shelter Island, Vail-Levitt Music Hall in Riverhead and Theater 3 Cinema Village in Port Jefferson.
The decade of the 1990’s inaugurated the collaborative screening partnerships and post-festival award galas with facilities that included multiplex cinemas, technology centers, mansions and castles, the Staller Center at Stony Brook University, nightclubs and theaters in Northport Theater and the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. During that era, in one season, the Long Island Film Festival would receive over 200 film entries!
Under the new leadership of Thomas Santorelli, the festival is now more organized and focused. Rafer Guzman of Newsday noticed the change in 2010. He wrote, "The Long Island Film Festival, now in its 27th year, is adjusting its focus. The event has at times felt a little blurry. In 2008, it was held in venues all over Long Island and even in Manhattan. In 2009, it attempted to stretch over seven weeks, making it difficult to tell when it began and ended."
The new changes by Santorelli include the World Lens series that focuses on independent film from all over the world. As an historian of early American cinema, he designed the LIFF Pioneer Awards, named after actors, directors, writers, and cinematographers that worked and made their homes, primarily in the Bay Shore-Brightwaters area and stretch from the silent era to recent times. We now have a new program called, Cinema Focus with Joel Martin where films are used as a vehicle to better understand such issues as immigration, the plight of the elderly, world events, the arts and other humanities areas.
We welcome new filmmakers from all genres to join us in screening and promoting your films in the Long Island Film Festival. As one early writer of film history once wrote, "the movies are America's gift to the world."
Christopher Cooke Biography
The Long Island Film Festival was founded in 1983 by Christopher Cooke during his tenure as Director of the Suffolk County Film Commission on Long Island, New York. The festival was the first of its kind and has showcased hundreds of independently produced feature length and short films. The festivals alumni include Hal Hartley THE UNBELIVABE TRUTH, Mathew Harrison RHYTHM THIEF, Tamara Jenkins SLUMS OF BERVERLY HILLS, Christopher Grimm GOYBAND, Fred Carpenter MURDRED INNOCENCE, Kimberly Pierce BOYS DON'T CRY,Bill Plympton I MARRIED A STRANGE PERSON, Kevin Jordan BROOKLYN LOBSTER, Larry Fessenden HABIT, Eric Mendelsohn JUDY BERLIN, Scott Saunders THE TECHNICAL WRITER, Joe Sikorski THE RETURN OF THE KING?, Alexandra Brodsky BITTER SWEET PLACE, Signe Baumane VETERINARIAN, Stan Schofield COST OF LIVING, Karl Nussbaum OPTIC CROSS, Laura Corella ELECTION DAY and Paul and Menno De Nooijer EXIT. These films, among scores of others, went on to win awards at the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto FilmFestival, Cannes Film Festival, the Hampton’s Film Festival and many more. Before working as Director of the Suffolk Film Commission and Office of Cultural Affairs, Cooke appeared as an actor in100 stage productions Off-Broadway in NYC and in Regional Theatres such as the Asolo State Theatre, Commonwealth Stage Company and the Hyde Park Playhouse.
In television he has appeared in Dreamwork’s television production SPIN CITYwith Michael J. Fox, SARDINESS with Peter Boyle and soap operas ALL MY CHILDREN and AS THE WORLD TURNS.
Mr.Cooke appeared in over a dozen films including Hal Hartley’s features THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH, TRUST and SIMPLE MEN, Mathew Harrison’s SPARE ME and Sundance winner RHYTHM THIEF, Scott Saunder’s THE HEADHUNTER'S SISTER, Fred Carpenter’s HBO film SMALL KILL and the international award winning Dutch film EXIT produced and directed by Paul and Menno de Nooijer. Mr. Cooke also acted as producer and “on-camera” host for PBS affiliate Channel 21’s production of OFF-HOLLYWOOD with Jeffrey Lyons, and CINEMA a Cablevision production produced by Larry Davidson.
Recently Cooke has acted as an adjudicator for several film festivals including the Palm Beach Woman’s Film Festival and “Digifest” held in Florence, Italy.
Thomas Santorelli Biography
Thomas Santorelli has enjoyed a wide variety of work in the media as an award winning filmmaker, musician, composer, historian of early American cinema, writer, radio producer, and recording engineer and technician. He is also Executive Director of the Long Island Film Festival.
He studied classical guitar under the scholarship of Russian born composer Alexander Bellow and composition and orchestration under film composer and conductor, Freddy Edmonds Jr. a.k.a. Marc Fredericks. (See The Life of Marc Fredericks under MP3 at www.santorellihistoricalmedia.org) Santorelli has composed music for solo classical guitar and for guitar and orchestra. He has written music for numerous radio and television commercials that have aired on the YES NETWORK, TBS, A&E and NEWS 12 as well as radio stations WHLI and KJOY and at Citifield Park in Central Islip, New York.
Santorelli got his in the start in the media on radio as Associate Producer of news director and host for The Joel Martin Show on WBAB rock radio. He has also written and produced many segments of ALL THINGS CONSIDERED for NPR
Santorelli was an award winning filmmaker before studing film history of early American cinema. In 2006, he was hired as historian and consultant for the renovation of the Vitagraph studio located at 94 Fourth Avenue, Bay Shore, Long Island. He assisted in preserving the building which is the only one that exists from early American cinema.
His expertise in the recording studio has earned him work as an audio archivist, preserving numerous audio interviews with Vitagraph stars and directors conducted in the early 1970's before their passing by internationally known English film historian and author, Anthony Slide. These digitally preserved interviews are located at the archives of the University of Southern California, Motion Picture and Television Library. Tom has also preserved numerous interviews with silent film stars Jetta Goudal, Lois Wilson, Carmel Myers, William Bakewell, Esther Walston, and Priscilla Bonnet from the series, THE SILENT STARS SPEAK, held at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Los Angeles, sponsored by the ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURE ARTS AND SCIENCES in Hollywood. A portion of these archived interviews was used as research materials in Emily W. Leider's book, DARK LOVER: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF RUDOLPH VALENTINO, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Thomas Santorelli was also an historical source and cited in the such books as, CRUSADER NATION: THE UNITED STATES IN PEACE AND THE GREAT WAR by David Traxel and published by Knopf, THE HAUNTING OF THE PRESIDENTS: A PARANORMAL HISTORY OF THE US PRESIDENCY, by Joel Martin (Signet), and THE HAUNTING OF AMERICA: FROM THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS TO HARRY HOUDINI by William J. Birnes (Macmillan)
Santorelli Historical Media, Inc. has acquired well over 5,000 photos and films starting from the silent era, archival film footage, historic documents, magazines and a reference library. As recording engineer and studio technician, Tom has worked for some of the biggest musicians and artists in the music industry. In the genres of rock, jazz, and classical music. Tom has worked for Harry Nilsson, Richie Cannata, Doug Stegmeyer (Billy Joel), Aldo Nova, Rebbie Jackson, David Lebolt (David Bowie, Billy Joel), The Scorpions, Isley Brothers, Claudio Arrau, Johnny Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge, Johnny Farina (Santo and Johnny), Blue Oyster Cult, The Cars, Cameo, Flo and Eddie, Ornette Coleman, Dee Snyder, Joe Franco (Good Rats, Twisted Sister, Widowmaker), Lou Reed, Debbie Gibson, Taylor Dayne, Joe Cocker, Roger Waters (Pink Floyd), Phil Ramone, Sting, and most recently Michael Feinstein.
Thomas Santorelli is currently in production on a documentary called, WHEN LONG ISLAND WAS HOLLYWOOD: THE FORGOTTEN STORY OF THE FAMOUS VITAGRAPH OF AMERICA to air on PBS.
