Wed Feb 24, 2016 – 7:30 pm | Hendricks Arts Center
Sun Feb 28, 2016 – 2:30 pm | Bagels & More
YES! Filmmaker(s) Attending for Q & A
Surviving Me
Written & Directed by: Leah Yananton
Narrative Feature
USA | 1 hour 42 minutes | 2015
As she enters her junior year of college, aspiring poet Sophie (Christine Ryndak) embarks on a journey of self-discovery amidst a sexual identity crisis. Fear and insecurity eventually get the best of her, and Sophie loses her moral compass, damaging her relationships with her boyfriend Jimmy (Vincent Piazza, Boardwalk Empire) and best friend Kiera (Leah Yananton), as well as her poetry professor Slateman (Fredric Lehne, Lost) and his enigmatic wife Jacqueline (Mira Furlan, Lost). Before she can find redemption and move into the next phase of her life, Sophie must journey through her own experience of Dante’s Inferno and take responsibility for her behavior.
Director: Leah Yananton
Yananton’s professional film experience began in the camera department on Spike Lee’s BAMBOOZLED and Marc Levin’s & Mark Benjamin’s BROOKLYN BABYLON. After earning her B.F.A. from Columbia University, she went on to travel the globe working on documentaries for HBO, National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel. Yananton’s documentary MANHATTANVILLE: A NEIGHBORHOOD UNDER SIEGE (32min) about Columbia’s controversial expansion into her West Harlem neighborhood, received grants from NYC’s Fund for Creative Communities and the NY Foundation for the Arts. MANHATTANVILLE along with her dark comedy short THE BURIAL, screened at the Harlem Film Festival, Girl Fest Hawaii, and L.A. Shorts Fest.
Leah is also developing an environmental justice documentary IN OUR BACKYARD, about the municipal polluting of an African American community in Athens, GA. Her next narrative feature explores the open secret of commercial sexual exploitation in West Hollywood and is currently in development.
