Director Katrin Bowen’s First Feature

World Premiere at Toronto International Film Festival

www.amazonfalls.com

(Vancouver, B.C. August 18, 2010)  — Award-winning director Katrin Bowen presents her first feature, Amazon Falls, in the Canada First program of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Amazon Falls is based on Bowen’s B-movie experiences in Los Angeles and unapologetically exposes the grit behind the glitz of fame. Featuring actual midnight-movie footage from Katrin’s brief foray as a Troma Films actress, Amazon Falls stars former beauty queen April Telek (Flight 93), as Jana, an aging starlet who refuses to give up on the Hollywood dream.

Amazon Falls centers on an emotionally-charged performance by April. She is supported by a stellar supporting cast, including: Anna Mae Routledge (Harpers Island, 16 Wishes); Zak Santiago (Young Blades, Alice); Ben Ratner (Fathers and Sons, Da Vinci’s City Hall); William B. Davis (best known as “Cancerman” from The X-Files); Tom Braidwood (The X-Files, The Lone Gunmen); and Gabrielle Rose (The Sweet Hereafter, Hungry Hills).

Katrin was impressed with the calibre of the acting talent and crew that came on board and was inspired by their belief in both the project and its first-time director:  “A lot of people with faith came on board, and to me that’s huge.”

According to screenwriter, Curry Hitchborn:  “Making Amazon Falls has got to be the fastest concept to turn around in recorded history.  It was two weeks straight of non-stop writing.  I put my entire life on hold and I’m so glad I did. I dived in and look what was produced: This phenomenal film.”
Composer Step Carruthers knew Katrin wanted Jana to have an “80’s rock,” never-say-die attitude, which clearly required lots of electric guitars!  Step added an e-bow to “allow us to stay with the electric guitar as a central instrument, but take it to other worlds, sonically and emotionally.”
Editor Franco Pante’s job was made easy by April’s standout performance and great camera work by Cliff Hokansen. But most of all, he loved working in the edit room with Katrin, whose vision for the film was rock-solid but whose style was extremely collaborative. The production presented budget and time constraint challenges to Co-producer / Executive Producer Darren Reiter, and was his first endeavor at a feature film.  A business entrepreneur and music-licensing expert, the Vancouver-based Darren has collaborated with award-winning producers and directors.  “I was introduced to Katrin by a mutual friend at a Christmas Party in 2008,” said Darren, “and I knew immediately that I had to work with this fiery Charlotte Brontë-esque director.”

Katrin was born in England and moved to Linden, Alberta at the age of 5.  From growing up in a Mennonite community in Linden to acting in b-movie kickboxing films in Los Angeles to writing and directing independent films in Vancouver, Katrin has led an eclectic life.  An alumnus of the University of California at Berkeley, The Cannes Producing Intensive, Women in the Director’s Chair and the Berlinale Talent Campus, Katrin speaks four languages and lives in Vancouver, B.C.

For more info and to set up interviews, get GAT:

Ingrid Hamilton | 416-731-3034 | ingrid@gat.ca

Allison Barber | 416- 801-6963 | allison@gat.ca

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Delving into the high-stakes world of appearances for which Los Angeles is infamous, Amazon Falls crafts a surprisingly intense and precise look at dream-chasers living at the margins of Hollywood. Populated with seemingly stereotypical characters whose inner depths are gradually revealed, Katrin Bowen’s clever first feature dons the guise of a B movie in telling the tale of Jana (April Telek in a pitch-perfect performance), a struggling actress who can only be described as a cross between Sally Kellerman and Dolly Parton.

This mid-life ingénue watched her career spiral downward after appearing in a semi-cult sexploitation film. Ironically, this dubious acting credit is the only thing that helps Jana land auditions. While pursuing her dream, she ekes out a meager living as a hostess in a gloomy Hollywood bar staffed with other struggling actresses. Among these is her friend, the younger, prettier Li (Anna Mae Routledge), whose audition with an allegedly famous director went far better than Jana’s. But Jana can’t see any of this; in her mind she has already gotten a part, and she pushes that white lie to the point of jeopardizing her grip on reality. She refuses a dinner theatre gig that her friend and agent Margaret (lovingly portrayed by Festival favourite Gabrielle Rose) has landed for her, and she seems blind to her musician boyfriend’s drug addiction and infidelity. Eventually, heartache and professional disappointment lead Jana to one of the rich older gentlemen she knows from the bar. Is he a benefactor or a predator that smells her desperation?

Curry Hitchborn’s focused script provides no easy answers; instead, it probes the cost of the Hollywood dream in a society obsessed with celebrity. But beyond Jana’s surface glamour lies a genuine vulnerability, and this works as a metaphor for the film itself, where staggering truths ripple a glossy finish.

Martin Bilodeau