We're excited to share with you our slate of films and clients for the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. If you think you may want time with our stars or filmmakers, please contact us well ahead of the Festival. We've entered into a partnership with ITVS, (INDEPENDENT TELEVISION SERVICE) which has an astonishing 7 films at Sundance. They will be sharing space with us in the Park City Marriott, Room 113. The telephone number there is 435-649-2900, Room 113. Films are listed in the order they screen.Please contact us in advance of the Festival at 212-595-6161 or at jeremy@jeremywalker.com if anything catches your eye.
Few films have managed to capture the out-of-body experience of what it's like to return to one's home as deftly as GARDEN STATE, the directorial debut of a young actor best known for playing a young doctor on an NBC sitcom. As Zach Braff's film begins we meet Andrew Largeman (Braff), a young TV actor of moderate - but not recent - success as he arrives late for his day job at a hot LA restaurant. When he learns that his mother has died, Large returns to his native New Jersey and to his steely psychoanalyst father (Ian Holm) and his stoner friends, including Mark (Peter Sarsgaard). Largeman (or Large, as he's known to his friends) only plans on staying only as long as it takes to bury his mother and maybe have a meaningful (and dreaded) conversation with his father. But when he meets Samantha (Natalie Portman), he discovers a fragile beauty with whom he's able to share things he's kept under wraps for years. GARDEN STATE has some very funny moments and an unforgettable, astutely rendered party scene, but both as the film's star and its director Braff wisely keeps the laugh track in check. Indeed, GARDEN STATE is that rare smart movie for young people that understands how traumatic it can be to let yourself fall in love. JW+A CONTACTS: Jessica Grant, 917-887-5198, Jeremy Walker, 917-597-7286
Lisa Blount paints the title character of this film, a survivor of
a car wreck, with a mixture of profound dignity and frank sexuality,
while Billy Bob Thornton plays a man who re-enters her life after
many years away. Their complicated reunion is as daunting as a house
full of ghosts, yet what goes on outside their home is equally harrowing
in the hands of this extraordinary filmmaking team. Set in the Ozarks
of Arkansas, where the illicit cultivation of marijuana has replaced
the backwoods distillery, CHRYSTAL is a complex and
very adult love story about a man and a woman coming to terms with
their shared demons. Ray McKinnon wrote and directed CHRYSTAL.
McKinnon, along with his partners Lisa Blount and Walton Goggins (Ginny
Mule Pictures) won an Academy Award for their short film “The
Accountant.” CHRYSTAL reunites this creative
team with unforgettable performances by both McKinnon and Goggins.
CHRYSTAL is produced by Ginny Mule, Bruce Heller and David Koplan.
CONTACTS: Mary Litkovich, 917-572-4739, Jeremy Walker, 917-597-7286
Writer-director Chris Kentis and producer Laura Lau took a killer "based on a true story" premise -- a vacationing couple scuba diving in tropical waters is mistakenly abandoned in the middle of the ocean -- and went on to create a harrowing, knees-to-your-chest thriller. OPEN WATER was made on weekends and holidays by Kentis, Lau, a few family members and actors Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis. Employing no special effects, the actors and filmmakers spent over 120 hours in the water many miles off shore amid all kinds of sea life, benign and menacing alike. Capturing a breathtaking range of ocean light, from hypnotic aquamarine to treacherous blackness, OPEN WATER reminds us how much fun it is to be frightened by our most primal fears, namely what we think may linger just below the surface. JW+A CONTACT: Jeremy Walker, 917-597-7286
It is 1933 in Winnipeg in the midst of the Great Depression. Beer Baroness Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rossellini) announces a global competition to determine the saddest music in the world and musicians from across the globe pour into town to vie for the whopping $25,000 prize. Sobbing Mexican Mariachis, dour Scottish Bagpipers, woeful West African drummers and numerous other grief-stricken ensembles give it their all. Not to be ruled out is the splashy entry from the United States of America, led by failed Broadway producer Chester Kent (Mark McKinney) and his muse Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros), who are embroiled in a family reunion as treacherous and twisted as the competition itself. JW+A CONTACTS: Mary Litkovich, 917-597-7269, Jeremy Walker 917-597-7286
Directed by Abby Epstein, UNTIL THE VIOLENCE STOPS, which will air on Lifetime on February 17, documents how The Vagina Monologues grew into an international grassroots movement called V-Day to stop violence against women and girls. In 2002, eight hundred cities around the world participated in V-Day by staging benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues. UNTIL THE VIOLENCE STOPS shows women from Harlem to Ukiah, California; from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to the Philippines and Kenya, uniting and courageously revealing their intimate and deeply painful experiences with abuse ranging from rape to female circumcision. In emotionally charged interviews and performances, everyday women and celebrities like Rosie Perez, Salma Hayek, Tantoo Cardinal, Jane Fonda, and LisaGay Hamilton embrace their bodies, reconcile their past, and bond together to break the silence that surrounds abuse. More than just testimonies and performances, UNTIL THE VIOLENCE STOPS is a film about empowerment and the importance of dialogue in the healing process. A celebration of women reclaiming their bodies and lives, this moving documentary leaves us with hope that change can happen.
With NEVERLAND, filmmaker Robert Stone brings into sharp focus the mood of the early 1970s, a mood that inspired the formation of perhaps the first radical domestic terrorist cell to become a media sensation. The SLA wreaked havoc on our national psyche for over two years, leaving behind a rich trove of paranoid recordings and scores of violent acts that to this day demonstrate just how far out their thinking was. Yet Stone understands and demonstrates that context is everything, and within the first reel of his film we get such a profound sense of the times that the reasons behind the formation of the SLA seem perfectly logical. The terrific archival footage used throughout this film - some of which hasn't been seen since it originally aired and much of it never before seen - is likely to be totally new to younger viewers. But the footage will also remind these viewers of something they today see all the time: the media feeding frenzy surrounding the big story or scandal of the day. Stone's film in no way sympathizes with the SLA. Instead, Stone's film uses the SLA and its most notorious act of terrorism-the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst-as a prism through which the country's attitude towards politics, race, class and the media are seen anew. JW+A CONTACTS: Christine Richardson 917-597-7269, Jeremy Walker 917-597-7286
For nearly a year, Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini lived and worked smack in the middle of Long Island so that they could capture first-hand the voices of people for whom the issue of immigration is not an abstract debate, but a reality of daily life. Once the shocking hate-based attempted murders of two Mexican day laborers catapults the town of Farmingville into national headlines, a new front line in the border wars is unmasked: suburbia. Blending the stories of town leaders, residents, day laborers and activists on all sides of the debate, this powerful,
balanced film reveals the human impact of national policies that can lead to fear, isolation, racism and violence. But FARMINGVILLE also captures the essence of the American dream by showing how these new pioneers weather even the ugliest storms by coming together and ultimately contributing to the community that is becoming their new home. FARMINGVILLE will be a POV premier on PBS in the 2004 Season. CONTACTS:Christine Richardson, 917-597-7269, Jeremy Walker 917-597-7286
In this critical and increasingly heated election year, many of the films at Sundance have overtly political content and the independent community is starting to ask some unusually big questions. We're very pleased to be working with American independent film icon John Sayles, whose long-range perspective and consistently political body of work offer substance and authority to the topic du jour. Festival-goers will have two opportunities to hear from him. At "A Conversation with John Sayles: The Art of the Possible and Making Ambitious Movies on a Low Budget," Sayles will preview never-before-seen footage from his upcoming feature SILVER CITY to support this "Master Class" discussion. Sayles will also participate in a unique Town Hall Meeting organized by Sundance called "Talking Politics Beyond the Screen." JW+A CONTACT: Jeremy Walker, 917-597-7286
INDEPENDENT TELEVISION SERVICE (ITVS) brings independently produced programs to the public - programs that transform television into a forum as wildly diverse, creative, and astonishing as the American public itself. Founded in 1988 by a historic mandate of Congress, ITVS fulfills its unique civic mission by supporting, producing, and promoting hundreds of groundbreaking programs for public television. Many have sparked national debate and won prestigious film awards. All champion unheard voices and untold stories, reaching hungry audiences eager to participate in a free, open and informed democracy.
A PLACE OF OUR OWN is legendary documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson's very personal film about the last forty summers he spent in the largely African American resort community of Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, and what it means to live life as a member of the rarely visible black upper-middle class.
IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL is Oscar-winner Jessica Yu's fascinating illumination of the epic artwork and reclusive life of Chicago custodian Henry Darger, whose inner life is captured in a 15,000 page novel with hundreds of pages of paintings that he never shared with anyone.
