Professor • ojshapir@syr.edu • 315.443.2214

Professor Shapiro created the BFA and MFA Film Programs in the mid 1970s and was coordinator of these programs until 2006. Now, as Senior Professor he splits his time between teaching and being Artistic Director of the Syracuse International Film Festival that he created in 2004. Since 1969 Shapiro has made over 30 films and a dozen videos on a wide range of subjects, all exploring the boundaries between documentary, narrative, and experimental genres. He has also co-written and produced two feature films, Session (2007, presently in post-production) and Hotel Syracuse (to be shot in May 2008). His latest personal work, Rain and A Woman (2005) is an experimental video exploring women in domestic and public spaces. Prisoners of Freedom is a 90 minute film about the Holocaust refugees brought to Oswego, N.Y. in 1944. A short version of this project, Greta's Story, completed in January of 2001 was an award winner in the Columbus International Film and Video Festival. In 2000 he completed a one-hour video. Trading Stories: The Czech Republic: 1996-1999 that explores contemporary Czech perspectives on property; at stake is the shape of capitalism in post-socialist Eastern Europe. The 1996 film, and Many Happy Returns, is an elegiac, yet humorous look at a group of elderly Jews at a summer camp for older adults. Thomas Szasz and The Myth Of Mental Illness (1989) is an hour-long film about the controversial psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz. It has been screened world-wide and is in the libraries of more then 250 institutions. In 1976 Shapiro was honored by Henri Langlois with a retrospective, Homage - Owen Shapiro, at the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris. His films have been in festivals in Edinburgh, Athens, Hong Kong, Israel, England, Germany, France, and throughout the USA. He has won numerous awards, and in 1987 was honored with a Fulbright Fellowship to be a guest professor at Tel-Aviv University, Israel. In addition to his work as a film and video maker he is also Associate Editor for Point of Contact, an international journal on the verbal and visual arts, and the author of numerous film theory articles.