A Time to Celebrate
We have an exciting secret to share with you — Our first European screening of In Her Name will be in Rimini, Italy at the NOT FILM FEST!
Being that Federico Fellini is one of our film’s most obvious influences, we’re confident you’ll agree that an invite to celebrate with top cinephiles in his hometown couldn’t be a more exciting or perfect fit.
One of the founders of the festival is Peter Baxter, who is also the founder of Slamdance, a US festival set in the desert and renowned for its modern sensibility, a lighter-hearted line up, and unique outdoor set up… more like a music festival where the experience is elevated by the natural environment. Just imagining our quirky black-and-white film surrounded by the landscape Fellini himself thrived in is such a thrill!
Tribeca Film Festival
It was an absolute honor to experience our premiere at Tribeca Film Festival. The festival was effectively curated to connect with other filmmakers, celebrate incredible cinema and inspire each other by sharing in the power of storytelling.
There were 130 films streaming at the festival. Just two days after our film was released, we were included in their top 15 worth the watch. By June 18th, we were one of six films to receive an AUDIENCE AWARD and advertised in The Hollywood Reporter among the best in the festival. We couldn’t be happier.
Largely thanks to Jessie Cohen PR and their fantastic team of publicists, the interviews and reviews have been great and have given our little film solid wings for continued success. Read what some critics are saying about In Her Name:
Ischia Global Fest
A Pity will stream online for the Ischia Global Fest! David Agranov will attend in person to represent the team. Ischia is one of the most picturesque islands in the Bay of Naples. Upon docking, you’re welcomed by the modern capital of Ischia Porto, home to a dramatic volcanic islet with a medieval castle on its hilltop, an excellent backdrop for our film!
NYC Festival of Cinema
In Her Name will head back to New York to represent in Queens at NYC Festival of Cinema. The NYC Festival of Cinema is designed the elevate the work of emerging filmmakers and help them get to the next level of their career. The festival particularly seeks feature films from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-time feature filmmakers, as well as shorts and episodic filmmakers that are looking to develop their work into features or series. All films selected come from independent filmmakers that put their blood, sweat, and tears into their productions.
Not Film Festival
In Her Name has also been OFFICIALLY SELECTED to be in competition at NÓT FILM FEST which will be held live in Santarcangelo di Romagna in Rimini, Italy. This will be our first screening in Europe! The festival will host lunches for all attending filmmakers in the beautiful countryside of Santarcangelo. 5 hours by car from Rome or Milan and 3 hours from Venice, Santarcangelo is an amazing destination nestled in the countryside and only 10km away from FEDERICO FELLINI’S home town.
Nòt Film Fest is dedicated to great independent films and creating opportunities for their filmmakers, an open air film festival offering a unique festival experience that is more than just outdoor movies. The festival mission to keep independent filmmaking alive has been honored throughout the festival's past editions, held in Santarcangelo di Romagna, a small village nested in the hills by the Adriatic coast near Federico Fellini’s hometown Rimini, where up-and-coming writers, directors and producers, alongside seasoned veterans and film lovers, converge for the weeklong celebration of independent cinema, making Nòt a great place to find the next, great, visionary films.
In the commitment to create real opportunities for filmmakers and launch careers they have created several partnerships to offer special awards, free education, distribution opportunities as well as daily networking events to connect in a friendly and informal environment. Among their judges and guests are Gabriela Rodriguez, producer of Alfonso Cuaron's Roma, Peter Baxter, founder of Slamdance, and Theo Green, Oscar-nominated sound designer of Blade Runner 2049.
Congratulazioni!!!
Thank You
A special thank you to Alex Ebert, one of my favorite artists and musicians. Alex is someone who’s insight, activism and expression has had an immense influence on me through the pandemic and processing grief around my brother’s death. Prior to that, his band Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros kept my vibration high through my pregnancy with Alice. He has been so accessible and humble while being approached to use his solo project song Truth as the title track to my directorial debut In Her Name. Immense gratitude to James Oliver for connecting us on a personal level. Our story holds potent medicine on freedom and art, on life, death, inclusivity, and duality. I’m so moved and somewhat amazed by the way it resonates.
Click the link below to hear ‘Truth’.
On a Personal Note
Attending Tribeca Film Festival was monumental for me.
Upon arrival in NYC I was driven straight from JFK to the red carpet to attend opening night with Jennifer Lopez and her entourage of amazingly talented little girls singing “Let’s Get Loud” to celebrate of her empowering documentary Halftime. JLo has been an enormous inspiration on many levels the past few years, as I have been building this production company, expanding my career and life, encouraging strong voices around me, and strengthening my own.
In real time, Kevin and I had the privilege of seeing all of the behind the scenes footage as Jennifer Lopez prepped for her halftime show. I watched her fight and take a stand for her vision and her mission. She is a boss. She faced a ton of adversity and injustice, but when she took the stage on that football field, I was screaming with joy for her and for all of us. She sang and danced her massive heart out with those young girls. She rehearsed the shit out of that show and was in control of every detail, but on the day she said she just let it all go and something carried her. She said she felt light as a feather. That’s what creative mastery and higher purpose feels like. She changed the perception of middle-aged mothers and Latin American women forever. She showed us that by working hard and following your passion, by trusting, nurturing, and honoring our bodies, women only get more magnetic and powerful with age. She was hot and ready to make the world a better place for her daughter’s generation, and I was right there with her.
Alice and I would dance behind Kevin as he edited a pitch reel for Jason Bergh, who was the heart and camera operator behind the doc. Jason is a longtime friend, so to witness his dream manifest and celebrate with him at such a high level that night set the tone for an extremely soulful homecoming to the industry after what has felt like a long time away.
Kevin (Barth, my husband) joined me a few nights later to premier his work on The DOC, which was a huge success. I joked that the documentary made it from our garage straight to Broadway. If you haven’t seen this documentary on the prolific rapper The D.O.C., I highly recommend it. Without being preachy or obvious, it’s about the spiritual journey of losing one’s identity and divine gift and in turn finding one’s true value and purpose and imparting that wisdom and healing. “What God gives God takes away.”
Once considered the greatest rapper of all time, collaborating with Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube, The D.O.C. lost his voice in a car accident and never got it back. He struggled with drugs and drinking for decades. Now he has found peace and devotes his life to his family and helping gang members choose a different path.
My favorite moment in the documentary is when Erykah Badu, Mother of his first born, notices his train coming off the tracks again after years of healing. The D.O.C. wants to get a risky surgery to “fix” his voice in an attempt to have it return to what it was and get back into the music game, back to who he was. She reminds him that he has the perfect voice now for who he has become… one that is exceptionally deep and resonant. Kevin, as always, cut this story together in such a sensitive way… working intimately with The D.O.C. himself and the entire team of collaborators, but not without his own clear point of view… anyone moving through the pain of their own evolution will relate.
The night In Her Name premiered at Tribeca, we were invited to an exclusive screening of Before Night Falls introduced by Martin Scorsese and attended by the director Julian Schnabel himself. I realize now that back in the early 2000s his work and that film in particular played a huge part in shaping my vision for Cheshire Moon Productions. I have always been most interested in the life stories of artists, sharing those stories, and supporting art in whatever way possible. I have always been aware that life is art and that art must be protected and valued in so much as life itself is.
It’s no surprise that my first film as a writer/director/producer, In Her Name, is a story about an artist reckoning with his soul dilemma and the impact his commitment to art has had on his wife and children. In Her Name focusses on the artist’s two daughters and their need to forgive their father in order to liberate themselves. The daughters also need to radically accept themselves and each other for their differences, even tolerating distorted memories and delusions in order to transcend and live in new possibility. When an artist’s spirit or calling doesn’t align with the systems imposed by family responsibility, expectations, and rules of society, there is often a sense of being betrayed or needing to “cancel” that artist and their work as a form of repercussion for where he has fallen short as a human being. In my opinion, Cancel Culture is profoundly destructive and counterintuitive to the sense of unity and belonging people most deeply need to heal.
True artists are our heroes and the real change-makers throughout history. More often than not they are also the most wounded, most misused, and most misunderstood. Especially today, we need to be reminded of the cultural importance of protecting freedom of expression and the courage it takes to create, write, and live purely, acting out and speaking out against oppression. Reinaldo Arenas is a great reminder of what I aspire to live for.
After that magical rooftop and moonlit screening / revelation of place and purpose, we met up with two of my favorite artists and oldest friends from Canada, Patrick Costello and Luciana Caro. The white rabbit lead us into a basement dive bar in the East Village where we closed the night with vodka cranberries, and singing show tunes with fellow musical theater nerds, angels, and genius… and it must be said that I felt drenched in my baby brother’s love for me, that Christopher had played a part in laying the path to that moment… of fully embracing who I have always been… I was right where I needed to be… nobody but Chris could possibly know exactly what (and who) would make me precisely that happy in that pivotal moment… which is also a theme explored in In Her Name… the healing presence of the wife / mother after she has died… that she continues to guide the family she has left behind… that she reminds them all gently of who they are and where they came from… pure love… that was my cameo in the film and the greater role I played (the spirit of the mother), but I digress.
Suffice it to say that being in New York, the city of my earliest dreams, and taking part in so many important discussions with tastemakers and influencers who are devoted to bringing awareness (and lightness) to the masses (Jennifer Egan, Stephen Fischer, Subject directors Camilla Hall and Jennifer Tiexiera, The Big Payback discussion on reparations), and the act of simply taking my seat at the table at the 2022 Director’s Lunch, marked the beginning of a whole new chapter for me as a committed filmmaker.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being here, and for reading this.
Dreams are for coming true.
~ S ~