Connecticut Film Festival Is On This Weekend

Connecticut Film Festival Is On This Weekend
Look what Film Festival Today said about last night!

Connecticut Film Festival Welcomes Thomas Hooker Beer. Help us get hooked on opening night when Governor Dannel Patrick Malloy helps kick off the 2011 Danbury festival at the Welcome Reception at The Palace Theatre at 6:15pm!

The Third & The Seventh

You'll never think about nature and architecture the same way again. They are one in the same! Check out this piece by Alex Roman, it's amazing.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

"Invictus" by William Ernest Henley

"Invictus" is a short poem by the English poet William Ernest Henley. The title is Latin for "unconquered"

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Rebecca Miller & "The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee"

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE
About The Production


“To be perfectly honest, I’ve had enough of being an enigma. I want to be known.”
-- Pippa Lee


FROM PAGE TO SCREEN: WRITING THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE is the story of one woman’s journey of self-discovery. For author and filmmaker, Rebecca Miller, that journey started nearly ten years ago.

“Pippa Lee began as a novel,” explains Miller, whose book was published to critical acclaim by Canongate in the UK last year. By turns humorous and emotionally exacting, it follows the inner-journey of an aging suburban housewife confronting the buried memories of her past while maintaining a tenuous grip on the seemingly idyllic world she has built for herself as an adult.

“It’s about a woman who you think you know when you meet her,” says Miller of her enigmatic protagonist. “Of course, you find out that she’s had a very different life than you’d ever expect, that she has a past. Gradually, you come to understand her, know her, and maybe even love her through understanding that past.”

The genesis of Miller’s novel came in 2000, following a reunion with a friend she hadn’t seen in twenty years, an irrepressible young woman who had since become a responsible wife and mother. “I started thinking about how that happens, how somebody’s identity mutates in that way, and whether or not you really ever change,” says Miller. “That was the fundamental seed of it.”

Miller, the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller, would first go on to adapt the Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winner PERSONAL VELOCITY (based on her short story collection of the same name) and write and direct THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE starring her husband, Daniel Day-Lewis, before turning her attention back to her unconventional heroine, Pippa Lee, in 2005. While finishing the final rewrites on the novel, she began working on the film’s screenplay.

She describes the screenwriting process as a “reinvention” of her novel, rather than an adaptation in the purest sense. “There was so much in the well that I wanted to keep going,” says Miller, who continued working on the script through multiple drafts for just over a year. “I wanted to see it in a different dimension. I wanted to give it to actors and see what they could do with it.”

“For me, it’s just a deeper and deeper search into the same terrain,” she explains. “The form of it is not the same. In some small ways, the plot isn’t the same. Even the characters in ways are not the same because of the actors’ interpretations. From the beginning, I knew that I didn’t need to be enslaved to the book because I’d already written it. I had the freedom to explore. ”

"The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee" Synopsis

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE
Synopsis

From all outward appearances, Pippa Lee (ROBIN WRIGHT PENN) leads a charmed existence. She is the devoted wife of an accomplished publisher (ALAN ARKIN) thirty years her senior, the proud mother of two grown children, and a trusted friend and confidant to all who cross her path. But as Pippa dutifully follows her husband to a new life in a staid Connecticut retirement community, her idyllic world and the persona she has built over the course of her marriage will be put to the ultimate test.

In truth, looks are deceiving, and this picture-perfect woman has seen more than her fair share of turmoil in her youth. Embarking on a bittersweet journey of self-discovery, accompanied by a new, strange and soulful acquaintance (KEANU REEVES), Pippa must now confront both her volatile past and the hidden resentment of her seemingly perfect life in order to find her true sense of self.

By turns wry, humorous, and moving, THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE presents the complex portrait of the many lives behind a single name.

Golden Globe nominee Robin Wright Penn and Academy Award® winner, Alan Arkin head an all-star cast that includes Blake Lively as the young Pippa Lee, Maria Bello as her mother, Suky Sarkissian, Keanu Reeves as Pippa’s inscrutable neighbor, Chris Nadeau, Monica Bellucci as the socialite Gigi Lee, triple Academy Award® nominee Julianne Moore as the freewheeling Kat, Academy Award® nominee and Golden Globe winner Winona Ryder as Pippa’s trusted friend, Sandra Dulles, Mike Binder as novelist Sam Shapiro and rising stars Zoe Kazan and Ryan as Grace and Ben Lee, Pippa’s young adult children.

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE is adapted from writer-director Rebecca Miller’s novel of the same name. It is produced by Lemore Syvan from Elevation Filmworks, and Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner from Plan B Entertainment. Executive producers are Winchester Capital, Jean-Luc De Fanti, and The Salt Company partners, Cyril Mégret, Robert Bevan and Samantha Horley.

CTFF Presents: "The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee" CT Premiere & Pre Theatrical Screening

The Connecticut Film Festival Proudly Presents The
Connecticut Premiere &
Nationwide Pre Theatrical Release of
"The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee"



Saturday, November 21st at
The Palace Theater
165 Main Street, Danbury CT.
Welcome Cocktail Reception 6:30pm,
PLPL Film Screening 7:30pm and
After Party At Two Steps Downtown Grille immediately following the film.
Tickets for reception, film and party $10.
Buy Ticket Now
Also, a limited number of tickets may be available evening of at The Palace