Inside the Festival: Staller Center Steps into the Future with Digital Cinema

Alan Inkles saw it coming years ago.

Inkles, the director of the Staller Center and founder/director of the Stony Brook Film Festival, said he saw the trend in the film industry hurtling away from traditional film formats and towards digital cinema projection. As the annual Stony Brook Film Festival approached, he knew the venue would soon reach a critical point where it was go digital – or go home.

"We knew we had to move," Inkles said in an interview with Patch. "Three or four years ago I realized we've got to go, and if we're going to do it, we have to do it the right way. We needed a big projector and big lenses ... It could not have happened in the nick of time."

Enter the Hill family and the Gaffney family, two local families who put their heads together and did make it happen in the nick of time. They came up with a gift of an undisclosed amount that was matched by the historic Simons Foundation challenge grant – which enabled the Staller Center to upgrade its technology just in time for the film festival, now in its 18th year.

Leith Hill and Bob Gaffney said their love of the arts was the motivating factor behind their gifts.

Gaffney said his father, a veteran in the film industry who even worked with Stanley Kubrick, helped instill in him a love for the movie business. Gaffney himself said he worked in the field for more than 10 years before leaving for a position at Renaissance Technologies. 

"My father had a very successful career. I kind of grew up on that," he said. "That's where my love for film started. ... I just thought [the gift] would be a nice way in my mind to honor my father, who passed away a few years ago."

Hill, who recently opened the restaurant Ellary's Greens in New York City, has been a longtime friend of the Staller Center and of the arts in general.

"It’s amazing to have such an artistic gem in the community," she said. "The quality of arts programming, from not just film but also live performers, is absolutely unbelievable. ... I believe in not only the arts as a learning tool but also as a phenomenal way to transport yourself."

As for the projector itself, it's a Christie Digital system manufactured in Canada.

"Christie has been making 35 millimeter equipment for eons," said Andy Nittoli, electrical engineer at the Staller Center. "They made the transition to digital with a lot of history and knowledge."

There's still a use for the traditional film projector in screening old movies and in screening silent films.

Nittoli said that a digital film "runs perfectly, whereas the old film degraded more and more" with each use over time.

Frank Imperiale, assistant technical director, added: "This projector, she's a dream. ... It’s so bright and vibrant and the color is beautiful."
Inkles said the digital cinema projection system opened up a world of opportunity as far as the Stony Brook Film Festival was concerned: previously, the festival could only accept movies that were finished on film or in DigiBeta format. BluRay technology and computer files were used in very limited capacity over the last two years. Now, though, with the majority of filmmakers using digital technology and the Staller Center's new projector ready to go, there were suddenly many, many more movies available to screen at the film festival.

"Without this projector, no way," Inkles said. "We would not have been able to do it."