Stories
Stories
Screen Saver
Stephen Apkon’s first movie memory is a little hazy. He’s pretty sure it was Mary Poppins, showing as the first half of a drive-in double feature (children were expected to sleep through the second, grown-up movie, which Apkon did). Today, Apkon’s (MBA 1986) viewing tastes have matured with age; if forced to choose just one or two favorite films, he names Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Harlan County USA, Barbara Kopple’s documentary about a Kentucky coal miners’ strike.
A former investment banker, Apkon found the ideal focus for his passion for film by forming a nonprofit group in 1998 to purchase the defunct Rome Theater, a 1925 historic landmark located near his home in downtown Pleasantville, New York. Renovated and expanded, it reopened in 2001 as the Jacob Burns Film Center (JBFC), showing a range of independent and foreign films and hosting special events with actors, filmmakers, and critics. (Steven Spielberg was a recent guest at the center’s 10th anniversary celebration; other luminaries include board members Ron Howard and Jonathan Demme and advisory committee members Glenn Close, Richard Gere, Liam Neeson, Tim Robbins, and Susan Sarandon, among many others.) In 2009, Apkon oversaw the opening of the JBFC’s $15 million, 27,000-square-foot Media Arts Lab that offers classes in filmmaking and what Apkon calls “digital literacy.”
“We have a dual mission around film and education,” Apkon says in a phone interview. “The nature of literacy changes based on how we communicate, and the vast majority of information these days is delivered through visual media. In the past decade, it’s also increasingly the way we express ourselves. It’s a tremendously exciting time.” In addition to offering open enrollment classes to children, teens, and adults, the JBFC provides (often at no cost) programs for students in underserved communities and at local correctional facilities.
“We’re not interested in solely seeking out the kids who want to be the next Steven Spielberg,” Apkon says. “They find us, they live here, they take every course. Our programs are geared toward all students. These are skills that everyone needs to be successful in the world today.
“Filmmaking is all about creating a shared vision and having the persistence to fight through all the issues that come up to achieve a successful solution,” Apkon continues. “In fact, it’s very much like looking at an HBS case in synthesizing information, risk-taking, and problem-solving.”
Having left Wall Street for the nonprofit world, Apkon notes that there is still a “huge relationship” between what he learned at HBS and his day-to-day duties at the JBFC. “I went from negotiating a $6.5 billion transaction to a $4.5 million industrial development bond,” says Apkon, who will publish a book on the power of visual media with Farrar, Straus and Giroux later this year. “The issues were the same; only the numbers were different. In my current role I think about how to grow, manage, and sustain a nonprofit that has very different metrics from a for-profit entity. But my HBS skills still apply.”
Post a Comment
Related Stories
-
- 16 Apr 2024
- Hollywood Reporter
Netflix Enters Its Dan Lin (MBA 1999) Era
Re: Daniel Lin (MBA 1999) -
- 01 Sep 2023
- HBS Alumni Bulletin
Turning Point: Listen to the Music
Re: Marnie Tattersall (MBA 1972) -
- 18 Jul 2023
- The First Five Years
The First Five Years: Brooke Biederman (MBA 2019)
Re: Brooke Biederman (MBA 2019); Rob Biederman (MBA 2014); Leonard A. Schlesinger (Baker Foundation Professor Chair, Practice Faculty); Christina R. Wing (Senior Lecturer of Business Administration); By: Robert Bochnak -
- 25 Aug 2022
- HBS Alumni Bulletin
Turning Point: Dream Weaver
Re: Sandy Climan (MBA 1979)