Paris When It Sizzles: US in Progress
The heart of Paris beats for film industry in June. Industry Week is the professional part of the Champs-Elysées Film Festival.
The submissions for US in Progress are now open till August 15th here.
This label includes the US in Progress (USiP) and Les Arc Film Fesstival’s team presenting the Paris Coproduction Village and La Residence de la Cinefondation which welcomes a dozen young directors who come to Paris to work on their first or second fiction feature project for 4 and 1/2 months. All together, they offer 24 film projects at different stages, from development to post production. More than 200 professionals from the industry, producers, international sellers, distributors, etc. are welcomed.
This year US in Progress broke out. It has become a top event for discovering American independent cinema not only for the Europeans invited to attend, but for Americans who find themselves in Paris for the event or who even make their own way to it as cognoscenti. This year was a year of exceptionally interesting projects by largely unheralded but very talented directors and producers (and one financier) who are making their way up the ladder in ways different from those you hear most heralded in Sundance, although, for the record, there is most often at least one of the five or six films in USiP that also reach Sundance.
The USiP Jury Award went to Wild Nights With Emily written and directed by Madeleine Olnek known for Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (2011 — Sundance, MoMA, Viennale, Gotham Award Nominee), The Foxy Merkins (2013) and Hold Up (2006). She also co-authored the book A Practical Handbook for the Actor, which describes an acting technique developed by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet and Oscar-nominated actor William H. Macy.
Wild Nights With Emily turns the story of the sad reclusive poetess Emily Dickenson on its head, preferring to see her having great nights with her next door neighbor, her sister-in-law, in a cagey, drole story which makes you wonder how you ever fell for the fake news stories about her in the first place. Seeing this comedy about the little-known relationships of poetess Emily Dickinson, you understand so much more about her than what you learned in high school, or even in Terence Davies’ recent film A Quiet Passion. In fact, one of those “ah ha” moments occurs watching it as you think you should have figured that out by yourself…but it takes the movie to realize it.
This innovative lesbian film deserves the US in Progress Jury award which celebrates artistry and innovation in independent American cinema. Presented by Jerry Schatzberg, the Indie Star Award recipient of the American Film Festival 2012 during its sister event, the Champs-Élysées Film Festival hosted by Sophie Dulac in Paris, the prize includes a post-production and promotion package worth 40,000€ plus a co-production investment offer.
Wild Nights was just one of the five works in progress which this year were all exceptional. For two days, the project holders present their rough cuts to 40 top European sales agents, distributors, festivals programmers and producers. On the third day, they get advice and feedback through one-to-one meetings with the buyers.
The awarded film gets post-production, acquisition and promotion services by Titra Film, Europa Distribution, Producers Network, Eaux Vives Productions, Centre Phi, Cosmodigital, and from Sweden, music by Frid & Frid Studio and from the U.S. Salem Street Entertainment et UnLtd Productions.
The ceremony was the culmination of the 2017 work-in-progress event, now in its sixth year, which presented three feature-length narratives and two feature-length documentaries to interested European sales agents, distributors and festival programmers:
– Wild Nights with Emily directed by Madeleine Olnek, produced by Casper Andreas, Max Rifkind-Barron and Anna Margarita Albelo. Aside from Madeleine’s originality as both creator and human being, this New York City-based playwright and filmmaker was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for this, her third feature. Her producer, Casper Andreas is also a director and actor. He was selected as one of the 100 most influential and newsworthy LGBT people by Out magazine and has produced and directed eight feature films (five of which he also wrote). Each film has collected multiple awards at film festivals around the world and most of them opened theatarically in the U.S. before a their successful release on VOD and DVD in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia.
– Human Affairs directed by Charlie Birns was produced by Charlie and Krista Parris. Atale of a surrogate mother and the parents-to-be, with whom she spends a weekend and about whom she keeps a journal gives a contemporary view of how difficult creating a life is…not only for the soon-to-be-born child but for the young woman bearing the child, the father — a stage director and his wife, the mother — a stage actor. Fascinating, with an edge that borders European in style, but very American in its notion of being able to create lives according to our wills which naturally must sometimes collide with our emotions and perhaps even our genetic makeup.
This is a film you will see on the circuit, I promise you. Charlie Birn’s first feature, it has already received a Tribeca Film Institute production grant and was honored by his placement in last year’s New York Film Festival Artist Academy. Among the many short films he has directed, he coproduced Liza Johnson’s Return (Cannes, 2011) and as an actor recently played Roger Madoff in ABC’s 2016 miniseries Madoff starring Richard Dreyfuss. He is currently developing a film about saints.
Producer Krista Parris began her film career at Jonathan Demme and Ed Sexon’s former company where she worked on Adaptation from development through its release and has developed material with artists such as Robert Schenkkan, Doug Wright and Neil LaBute. Coming up is Josephene Decker’s feathre, Madeleine Madeleine staring Molly Parker (House of Cards), Miranda July (You and Me and Everyone We Know) and newcoming Helena Howard. A 2016 Trans Atlantic Partners producing fellow, she is currently developing features with Carmichael and Sasie Sealy and is producing a limited doc series about the Watergate scandal directed by Charles Ferguson (Inside Job), scheduled to be broadcast on A&E’s History Channel in 2018.
– The Rainbow Experiment directed by Christina Kallas and produced by Allison Vanore is a fast-paced engrossing story of a high school accident involving a science experiment that injures a kid for life. Told with a touch of Bueller Bueller’s Day Off narration, this who-done-it with a how-they-saw-it leads to an explosion of emotions touching on the teachers, the parents, the school authorities and ultimately, the students. The director, Christina Kallas whose fifteen years of screenwriting and producing in Europe (she’s originally from Greece, and her debut feature as director, 42 Seconds of Happiness, was an official selection at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in 2016, won Best Feature at WTxFF, Best Ensemble Cast at Harlem Film Festival, Indie Spirit Award at Princeton Idepdendent Film Festival and Best American Film at the Jaipur Internaiontal Film Festival, also teaches film at Columbia Univesity and Barnard College since 2011.
Her producer Allison Vanore is an Emmy-nominated producer of the Stylehaul digital series Vanity starring Denise Richards and is head of production for CMS where she’s producing original series like Socio currently in development at MTV. She is now in post on Buck Run starring James Le Gros and Kevin J. O’connor and is developing a slate of films that are specifically female-driven and staffed. Her feature film credits include 42 Seconds of Happiness (Indie Rights, 2017), Daddy (Breaking Glass, 2016), Love in the Time of Monsters (Indican, 2012), Office Ninja (Indie Rights, 2014) and Hopelessly in June (Phase 4 — now eOne) — 2011).
— About a Mountain is the most “in progress” of all the films, being shaped and directed by Lily Henderson, produced by Joey Carey, Keith Miller and West McDowell. This documentary ties together in a delicate and understated balance the various versions of truth regarding the highly contentious nuclear waste storage debate in Nevada surrounding Yucca Mountain’s root history among the indigenous Americans who first settled there, the suicide of a popular teenage boy who mysteriously jumps from the roof of Las Vegas casino to his death, and that all-American city of Las Vegas. In a factual recounting of these elements by normal people, a mysterious linkage develops between the story and the audience’s knowingly speculative conclusions.
– The Pervert directed by Jack Dunphy and Nathan Silver, produced by Matthew Ellison, Steven Hudosh and Nick Rafferty is about a self-destructive filmmaker trying to make a documentary about his dying father as he wins and loses the girl of his dreams. Jack Dunphy’s autobiographical short films Serenity (2015) and Chekhov (2016) along with the short film Bob Dylan Hates Me which he animated (directed by Caveh Zahedi) were all featured at Sundance Film Festival. He codirected The Pervert with Nathan Silver whose films have shown before at US in Progress (Stinking Heaven, Actor Martinez and Thirst Street which showed in Tribeca, Marfa, and Locarno and will be featured as a Special Event at the upcoming Venice Days).
Jack says,
As my father was dying, I used my carmera the way I’ve always used it — as a tool to better cope with, and understand, my reality. By using reenactments and animation to show the havoc filming my father’s death wreaked on my life, my co-director Nathan Silver and I aim to use cinema, in all its different forms, to express the ‘release of love’ one experiences when losing a loved one.
Now in its sixth edition, CEFF’s jury included the regular members every year: Sophie Frilley (Titra Film), Oliver Van Den Broeck from The Searcher (Europa Distribution), Julie Bergeron (Producers Network), Xenia Maingot (Eaux Vives Productions), Myriam Achard (Centre Phi) and new partners from Paris: Simone Appleby (Cosmodigital), Sweden: Pär and Karl Frid (Frid & Frid Studio) and the U.S.: Todd Remis (Salem Street Entertainment and financing producer of Sebastián Silva’s Magic Magic) and David Moscow, a great storyteller himself who was the little boy in Big. (UnLtd Productions).
These very accomplished filmmakers took the event USiP up a couple of notches and personally I was thrilled to think of the powerful naysayers who had tried to impede its development when Adeline Monzier (now the director of Unifrance in U.S.) and Ulka Sniegowska of the American Film Festival in Wroclaw Poland struggled to start it. With Adeline’s exit, her former assistant, another French transplant to N.Y., Marie Zeniter (and the France-based Chantal Lian) have brought in greater talents chosen from a small pool of 55 applicants. Anyone reading this will now know this is fertile ground for upcoming filmmakers to make an international leap into the business.
At the same time in Los Angeles, alumni of the 2016 US in Progress Pete Ohs and Andrea Sisson’s Everything Beautiful Is Far Away won the U.S. Fiction Cinematography Award at LAFF, while 20 Weeks, directed by Leena Pendharkar, made its world premiere and played to positive reviews at LAFF.
US in Progress involves two yearly get-togethers and the next edition will take place in Wroclaw in October 25–28, 2016 in the scope of the American Film Festival. US in Progress Wroclaw’s submissions starts from April 6th to August 21st. The submissions are now open till August 15th here. If you have a U.S. film in post, apply now!! The experience is invaluable and the family you join is one of the most interesting families in the business — international and American in two of Europe’s most remarkable cities — Paris and Wroclaw.
This year’s participants, on our way to the closing night party at the beautiful hotel particulair
