An ISU alumnus has been awarded a Sundance Film Festival award for a short film that documents the lives of New York’s roughest drinking crowd.

Independent filmmaker Stefan Nadelman, a 1994 graduate in fine arts, won the jury prize in short filmmaking for his film, “Terminal Bar,” during the 2003 Sundance Film Festival held Jan. 16-23 in Park City, Utah. The annual festival, launched by Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford, honors outstanding independent films and filmmakers.

Nadelman was encouraged to enter his film in the festival after winning the best short film award at ResFest Digital Film Festival last year. ResFest is a traveling film festival based in New York that highlights the best in digital filmmaking.

“From the 3,000 entries, Sundance took about 90 and [Stefan] won it,” said Sheldon Nadelman, Stefan Nadelman’s father. “I think he did a really great job. It was better than good — it was something different.”

Stefan Nadelman is now getting calls from producers and filmmakers in Hollywood, and is currently at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in France promoting “Terminal Bar.” He was unavailable for comment.

The 22-minute film tells the stories and lives of the patrons of Terminal Bar, a New York drinking establishment. The bar, which used to be located at 41st Street and 8th Avenue, was named “the roughest bar in town” by New York Magazine in 1980. The Terminal Bar used to be an Irish pub, but gradually turned into a predominately gay bar. It officially closed in 1982.

Sheldon Nadelman, Stefan Nadelman’s father, worked as a bartender at Terminal Bar between 1972 and 1982 and photographed and collected more than 2,500 black-and-white pictures of the bar’s customers.

“I met a lot of good people, a lot of crazy people, a lot of sick people,” Sheldon Nadelman said. “It was pretty rough, but it was rewarding at the end because of all the photographs.”

Sheldon Nadelman said he proudly displayed the still photographs of the Terminal Bar’s patrons around the Nadelman house; he said they represented a wide range of the people living and working in the city. Stefan Nadelman was inspired to create the film through a combination of photographs, interviews with his father and narration based on articles written about the bar.

“[Stefan] was surrounded by these photographs and my art,” Sheldon Nadelman said. “It was 10 years of photographs of all these faces.”

Although the boys were young during Sheldon Nadelman’s years working at Terminal Bar, Cary Nadelman, Stefan Nadelman’s brother and agent, said the photographs were enough for the boys to understand its atmosphere.

“They were really all alcoholics and winos,” said Cary Nadelman.

Cary Nadelman said his brother’s reaction after winning the Sundance award was one of complete shock. “Stefan was blown away,” Cary Nadelman said. “He called me about 20 minutes after the ceremony and he was almost crying.”

Cary Nadelman said his brother’s fine arts degree doesn’t really relate to his current interests in film.

“His background in film is pretty much nonexistent — he got into film by doing it on the side as a passion,” Cary Nadelman said.

While working in New York as a Web designer, Stefan Nadelman was exposed to Macromedia Flash, a computer software program commonly used to design multimedia-rich Internet sites. He then left a career in Web design to pursue a film career, but still continues his job as an art director.

Not only is the subject matter of the film striking, but so too is the way in which the film was created — the use of Web design expertise to make still photographs into a moving picture is unique to the film world, Cary Nadelman said.

“[Stefan’s filmmaking style] is a style that’s never been done before,” he said. “Flash has rarely been used in film.”

Stefan Nadelman was not prepared for the amount of attention the film would receive, Cary Nadelman said.

“It seems to have opened a lot of doors for him,” he said.