October 15, 2002
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu

Filmmaker Allison Anders presents her film
Gas Food Lodging at UCSB Campbell Hall

Summary Facts:

• Screening of Gas Food Lodging with filmmaker Allison Anders
• One of the few women directors to achieve a sustained career in independent film
• She will present a 10th anniversary screening of her debut feature
• Thursday, November 14
• 7:30 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
• General public $, UCSB students $5
• Tickets/Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535

Director Allison Anders, a MacArthur “Genius” Award-winner who will join the UCSB Department of Film Studies as a Distinguished Professor in January 2003, will present a 10th anniversary screening of her film Gas Food Lodging on Thursday, November 14 at 7:30 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall.

Allison Anders is one of the few women directors to achieve a sustained career in independent film. A graduate of UCLA’s film school, in 1987 Anders co-directed Border Radio, a powerful film about the Los Angeles punk scene, with fellow students Kurt Voss and Dean Lent. The film, starring John Doe of X and Dave Alvin of the Blasters, developed a cult following. Anders released her first solo directing effort Gas Food Lodging in 1992. The film is about the lives of three restless women—a single mother and her two teenage daughters—in a dusty Western town, who balance lives of quiet despair with a sense of the miraculous. Poignantly acted by Brooke Adams, Ione Skye and Fairuza Balk, the film earned Anders the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best New Director. The Los Angeles Times writes that Gas Food Lodging “captures a genuine heartland feel...There’s a real shrewdness and compassion in its depiction of ordinary lives—but also a curious, lyrical sense of romance and mystery.”

Anders other films include “The Missing Ingredient” from the anthology film Four Rooms (with other segments by Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and Alexandre Rockwell), the charged Mi Vida Loca, a high-tension drama about LA’s barrios and girl gangs, and Grace of My Heart, a fictionalized look at a Carole King-type singer-songwriter, starring Illeana Douglas and John Turturro, and featuring original music by a clever teaming of songwriters such as Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello.

In 1999 Anders teamed up with former collaborator Kurt Voss to make Sugar Town, a wry satire of has-beens and wanna-bes in the Los Angeles music industry. The film, starring Ally Sheedy, Rosanna Arquette and ’80’s rock stars like Michael Des Barres and Martin Kemp, was the centerpiece premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Anders’ most recent film, Things Behind the Sun, is loosely based on her own traumatic experience of being raped as a young girl. This unflinching drama about a reckless but promising rock singer premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and played on Showtime. “Movies don’t get a lot more personal or intense than Allison Anders’ Things Behind the Sun,” claims the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “Like a good rock song, her film is a bit raw, utterly honest and hard to forget.”

Born in rural Kentucky, Anders survived a rough childhood and teen years that she claims fueled her desire to create gritty female characters who remain strong no matter their put-upon situations. Anders persevered through time in foster homes, being raped at age 12 and being abused by a vicious stepfather. Her life turned around upon attending UCLA Film School, where she won awards including the prestigious Nicholas Fellowship from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Fascinated by the work of master German director Wim Wenders, she wrote him numerous letters and he agreed to let her work on his film Paris, Texas. Soon after that experience she made Border Radio. Her career had begun.

Anders is the mother of three children and has recently moved to the Santa Barbara area.

This evening with Allison Anders is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures, the Department of Film Studies and the UCSB Center for Film, Television and New Media.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.