New York Mayor Bill de Blasio joined the city’s media and entertainment commissioner Cynthia López yesterday to present the 2014 Made in NY Awards, celebrating excellence in the New York City creative community and recognizing the achievements of individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the city’s entertainment and digital media industries.
The Made in NY Awards come at a time when New York City is hosting record levels of television production. So far in the 2014-2015 season, the city has been home to 39 primetime episodic, digital and mini-series, including 20 new series. More than 230 films have also shot in New York City to date this year.
The 2014 Made in NY Award honorees are: Golden Globe and SAG award-winning and Emmy-nominated actor and director Steve Buscemi; five-time Emmy award-winning actor, executive producer, writer, director Louis C.K.; Tony and five-time Emmy award winner Neil Patrick Harris; Brooklyn-born digital design and technology consultancy Huge; MacArthur Fellow and National Humanities Medal honoree Stanley Nelson; Oscar and Emmy award-nominated actress, activist and The View co-host Rosie Perez; Producers Guild of America‘s Lydia Dean Pilcher, VP motion pictures, chair, Women’s Impact Network; Mari Jo Winkler, chair, PGA Green and Rachel Watanabe-Batton, vice chair, PGA East; and Blue Bloods co-executive producer and Sex and the City producer Jane Raab. The Made in NY Mayor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement was presented to Albert Maysles, filmmaker and founder of the Maysles Documentary Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the exhibition and production of documentary films that inspire dialogue and action in Harlem.
“The Made in NY brand has been a tremendous success – becoming a globally recognized symbol of innovation and quality,” said de Blasio. “We’re proud to honor the talented New Yorkers working in front of the camera and behind the scenes, supporting the industries that help make up our city’s cultural soul and economic health, and creating opportunities for New Yorkers along the way.
The city also announced a donation of $160,000 from the Teamsters Local 817 to MOME through the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City to support community enrichment in local neighborhoods. Additionally, the Teamsters will send two graduates from the Made in NY Production Assistant Training Program to commercial driving school in order to receive their commercial driver’s licenses and get added to the Teamsters’ referral list in time for the upcoming TV pilot season. The recipients are Tim Valerio, who served as a corporal in the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan before returning to New York and who, since graduating from the Made in NY PA Training Program, has worked as a grip, and Jimmy Gonzalez, a native New Yorker and father of two, who finished the PA program earlier this year and has been working as a set PA on an upcoming NBC comedy.
Additionally, the city announced that Brooklyn College‘s Barry R. Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Steiner Studios – the nation’s first public graduate school seamlessly integrated into working film lot and the city’s first public graduate school of cinema – is now accepting applications. Funding for the school is the result of an extensive public-private partnership among notable Brooklyn College alumni, MOME, Steiner Studios, the New York City Council, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, and the City University of New York.
