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First Run Snaps U.S. Rights to girl model; Plans Summer Theatrical Release

Posted Tuesday, March 13th, 2012 - Comments Off on First Run Snaps U.S. Rights to girl model; Plans Summer Theatrical Release
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First Run Features announces its acquisition of U.S. theatrical, home video and VOD rights to David Redmon and Ashley Sabin’s acclaimed documentary Girl Model. First Run plans a summer theatrical release, followed by a fall DVD and VOD release to coincide with the film’s broadcast premiere on PBS’s POV series. Told through the eyes of a 13-year-old Siberian girl and the American scout who discovered her, Girl Model follows a complex global supply chain of young girls sent abroad to seek their fortunes in the unregulated and often murky world of the modeling industry. Just released in UK theatres by Dogwoof, Girl Model has garnered strong audiences and overwhelming critical acclaim for both its provocative subject matter and its realistic portrayal of what many think is a glamorous profession. Girl Model follows two protagonists involved in the modeling industry: Ashley, a model scout who scours the Siberian countryside looking for fresh faces to send to the Japanese market, and one of her discoveries, Nadya, a 13-year-old plucked from her rustic home in Russia and dropped into the center of bustling Tokyo with promises of a profitable career. After Ashley’s initial discovery of Nadya, they rarely meet again, but their stories are inextricably bound. As Nadya’s optimism about rescuing her family from financial hardship grows, her dreams contrast with Ashley’s more jaded outlook about the industry’s corrosive influence. Girl Model is a lyrical exploration of a world defined by glass surfaces and camera lenses, reflecting back differing versions of reality to the young women caught in their scope. As we enter further into this world, it more and more resembles a hall of mirrors where appearances can’t be trusted, perception becomes distorted, and there is no clear way out. Will Nadya, and the other girls like her, be able to find anyone to help them navigate this maze, or will they follow a path like Ashley’s, having learned the tricks of the labyrinth but unable to escape its lure? Girl Model received funding through the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, Cinereach, Puffin Foundation, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, IFP, Chicken and Egg Pictures, and The Fledgling Fund. David Redmon and Ashley Sabin have produced, directed, edited and photographed six feature documentaries: Mardi Gras: Made in China (2005), Kamp Katrina (2007), Intimidad (2008), Invisible Girlfriend (2009), Girl Model (2011) and Downeast (2012). Their intimate and intricately crafted documentaries have won a variety of film festival awards, and their work has aired on television stations throughout the world. Redmon received his Ph.D in sociology from the University at Albany, State University of New York. In 2010/2011 he was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University. Sabin received her BA in Art History from Pratt Institute. “We’re delighted and thrilled to work with First Run,” said Redmond and Sabin. “It is an established, hard-working company with an excellent reputation for distributing a wide range of successful movies in numerous outlets.” “It’s an honor to be working with Ashley and David on their mesmerizing, unforgettable film,” said First Run’s VP Marc Mauceri. “I’m guessing it’s going to be a shock to anyone who follows the fashion and modeling industry. And hopefully what it reveals will help change things.” Founded in 1979, First Run Features is one of America’s notable distributors of documentary and foreign films. Recent releases include Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey’s Eames: The Architect and the Painter, DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’s Kings of Pastry, Ken Bowser’s Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune, Joe Berlinger’s Crude, and Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith’s Academy Award-nominated The Most Dangerous Man in America, Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.

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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

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon