New School Alumnus Jeremy Cohan Awarded Prestigious Film Prize
2011 Media Studies graduate Jeremy Cohan at the Directors Guild of America Student Film Awards ceremony in New York. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Cohan.
It’s the beginning of award season once again, and though the Academy Awards may not be on the immediate horizon for New School alumnus Jeremy Cohan, his most recent prize brings him one step closer. On November 28, Cohan, a 2011 Media Studies MA graduate, exited the Directors Guild of America Theater on West 57th street in New York, (merely 2,800 miles east of Hollywood Boulevard), clutching an impressive-looking glass award for Best African American Student Filmmaker in the East Region—Jury Award. The win honors his documentary After, which was produced and filmed during the 2010-2011 academic year in New York.
“I am incredibly proud to have this documentary recognized by such an important organization in American film,” said Cohan. “Documentaries are so much more than illustrated educational tools. It’s wonderful to have studied at The New School, which fosters that exact mentality.”
Cohan’s After is a documentary short that reflects on a mother and father’s struggle to come to terms with the death of their son nine years after he takes his own life. The film explores how a tragic loss reverberates in the lives of those left behind.
Each year, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) honors student directors by announcing winners for the annual Student Film Awards for aspiring African American, Asian American, Latino, and women filmmakers. The awards, which give student winners prizes of $2,500, bring attention to and encourage exemplary minority and women film students from select universities.
DGA member panels selected the 2012 winners from a list of competing films that had to have been produced as a student project under the supervision of a faculty member and come from an accredited post-secondary institution in California or DGA-selected university offering a degree in film or television.
Click here to see an excerpt of Cohaan’s After.