By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

First Run Features to Release New Feature Documentary, Pink Ribbons, Inc.

Posted Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 - Comments Off on First Run Features to Release New Feature Documentary, Pink Ribbons, Inc.
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About the Ubiquitous Pink Ribbon Campaign & Susan G. Komen for the Cure®

In the wake of the controversy surrounding Susan G. Komen for the Cure® and Planned Parenthood, First Run Features announces today that it will release recent Toronto Film Festival acquisition Pink Ribbons, Inc. in U.S. theaters in Spring 2012. The exact opening date and initial cities will be announced soon.

Directed by veteran documentary filmmaker Léa Pool for the National Film Board of Canada, Pink Ribbons, Inc. examines how the ubiquitous pink ribbon campaign may boost corporate profits and brand awareness more than it benefits people with breast cancer.

Interest in the film has intensified since the controversy began last week, when Komen announced the suspension of grants for breast cancer screenings through Planned Parenthood. Last Friday, after a sustained outcry over the new policy, Komen reversed their decision, making Planned Parenthood once again eligible to apply for funding (although that funding is by no means assured).

Inspired by the book Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy, Pink Ribbons, Inc. features interviews with experts, authors, activists, medical researchers and women with breast cancer, as well as the leading players in breast cancer fundraising and cause-related marketing. The film looks at how the breast cancer movement has moved from activism to consumerism and challenges viewers to rethink their assumptions about the meaning of breast cancer in our society. Who really benefits from the Pink Ribbon campaigns – the cause or the companies? Despite the millions of dollars raised each year for the cause, breast cancer rates are rising, prevention is vastly underfunded and, over the decades, we’ve seen onlyincremental improvements in chemotherapy and surgery treatments.

Director Léa Pool hopes the film will encourage people “to be more critical and more politically conscious about our actions and to stop thinking that by buying pink toilet paper we’re doing what needs to be done.”

“Pink Ribbons, Inc. asks important questions,” says producer Ravida Din. “Our film is about trying to find real change in women’s experience around breast cancer and asking whether this is the right way to get there.”

Pool adds that, as the filmmaker, she is not suggesting throwing the baby out with the bathwater. “I don’t want to say that we absolutely shouldn’t be raising money. We are just saying, ‘Think before you pink.'”

PINK RIBBONS, INC.
Run Time – 98 minutes
Language – English
Format – Digital
Year – 2011
Genre – Documentary

Director, Writer: Léa Pool
Producer: Ravida Din
Executive Producer: Ravida Din
Associate Producer: Nancy Guerin
Researcher/Writers: Patricia Kearns, Nancy Guerin
Interviewees: Judy Brady, Barbara A. Brenner, Nancy G. Brinker, James Brophy, PhD, Janet Collins, Carol Cone, Dr. Charlene Elliott, Barbara Ehrenreich, Charlotte Haley, Jane Houlihan, Marc Hurlbert, PhD, Dr. Marion Kavanaugh-Lynch, Margaret Keith, PhD, Samantha King, Evelyn H. Lauder, Ellen Leopold, Dr. Susan Love, Kim McInerney, Dr. Olufunmilayo I. Olopade, MD, IV League, The Plastics Focus Group

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

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