Arts & Entertainment

Film Commission To Match Anonymous Donation, Give High School's APA $3K

Fort Lee Film Commission "steps up to bat" for Academy of Performing Arts after receiving an anonymous $1,500 donation for summer movie and concert series.

The Fort Lee Film Commission is using its 10-week “Movies and Music Under the Stars” program this summer to raise funds for the Fort Lee High School Academy of Performing Arts (APA) via sponsors of the 10 programs to help offset budget cuts to the APA program earlier this year. The Film Commission announced this week that it has received a $1,500 donation from an anonymous donor and is matching that donation with plans to present a check for $3,000 to the APA this fall.

“When they had that situation in the spring or early summer with the ramifications of budget cuts impacting the APA programs, we were concerned,” said executive director Tom Meyers of the Fort Lee Film Commission.

So the Film Commission, which has been raising funds for Fort Lee High School thespians to hold Shakespeare workshops for the past couple of years through its annual John Barrymore birthday fundraising event, decided to dedicate its “Movies and Music Under the Stars” fundraising efforts this year to the APA instead of funding other special projects like film restoration—something Meyers called, “extremely important to us,” but also “quite expensive.”

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Meyers said the film commission normally seeks sponsors each year for the free, outdoor music and movies series to offset its own costs, because although the town does provide the film commission with some funding via a line item in its budget, any additional money raised through various fundraisers enables the organization to take on other special projects.

“There’s nothing more important to any film commission—certainly the Fort Lee Film Commission—than getting involved in film restoration and preservation projects as regards films produced in Fort Lee,” Meyers said, noting that the Fort Lee Film Commission has raised several thousand dollars over the course of the past 10 years for such projects. “That’s pretty much one of the most important things we do. So this is how important we think saving—or at least assisting—the Fort Lee High School [APA] is in Fort Lee that we’re foregoing any use of that money this summer, soliciting donors specifically and telling them that we’re doing a matching fund program; we’re going to go out and match the $1,500 we got.”

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Meyers said the anonymous donor came to the film commission in June before this year’s “Movies and Music Under the Stars” program even got underway.

“We asked if they would like to be involved in the presentation of these films, to promote them for the cause of the APA, and they said no,” Meyers said. “They wanted to remain anonymous. And they suggested that we try to match what they gave us, and that’s what we intend to do.”

Meyers said he’s currently in the process of reaching out to school officials, informing them of the intended $3,000 donation and asking them, “Who do we make the check out to, and when can we make the presentation in September or October?”

Meyers said he wants to make it a public presentation so that the community sees organizations “stepping up to bat and participating in events that raise money for the [APA].”

“The reason we want this to be a public event is because more organizations may get in and help the APA when they see what’s going on,” he said. “The sports community, I applaud them; we all applaud them. And they do a great job in terms of boosters and sponsorship.”

He also noted that the Fort Lee Chamber of Commerce has been involved with the high school’s Academy of Finance for several years and helped raised money for that program. But the arts, he said, “have always been second class in terms of any funds being raised by outside organizations.”

“We need to bring the [APA] up to that same level as sports, as the Academy of Finance,” Meyers said. “We need to let the people of Fort Lee know that it’s important to have the arts serve the kids, and the kids serve the arts in the high school. And any cut really needs to be met with public and private organizations stepping up to bat to try to at least offset—in any way we can—some of these cuts.”


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