Some Kind Of Love - World Premiere of NZ Doco At PSIFF Jan 4

FAMILIAL STORY including DR. SONNABEND, AIDS PIONEER & AMFAR FOUNDER and his London Based artistic sister YOLANDA…

SOME KIND OF LOVE
A film by Thomas Burstyn

World Premiere at the
Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) 2015
Director Thomas Burstyn in attendance
Screening Information

Sunday January 04, 8:30pm Palm Springs Regal 9
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Oscar shortlisted Thomas Burstyn, embarked on a familial journey to revive his relationships with his extended UK family, while ultimately reconnecting with his own brother. Out of this pilgrimage came SOME KIND OF LOVE.

You will find the journey painful, filled with idiosyncrasies while following his Step-Aunt, world renowned artist YOLANDA SONNABEND, who just a few short years earlier, held the heady position of being the wardrobe & scenic designer for the ROYAL BALLET.

In steps her older brother, Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, MD, New York AIDS pioneer, and leading scientist to change the face of AIDS as we know it. He also founded what is now known as AMFAR.

Neither one is living the dreams they imagined as children growing up.
With zero work/life balance, artist and designer Yolanda Sonnabend, 77, lives surrounded by a half century of painting, sculpture, frames, fabrics, books, archeologia and the ephemera of her frenzied imagination. Her glory days are behind her. She resides in ‘Havershamian’ splendour in the last un-renovated house in a posh suburb of London. Her home is her last lover, her unborn child, and her very skin. At the end of her tether, Yolanda is struggling with a final commissioned portrait.

Meanwhile her older brother has moved in, along with his concert grand piano. Dr Joseph Sonnabend, 79, is the esteemed New York AIDS doctor famous for discovering one of the building blocks of the virus. After a career committed to science and patients, Joseph has returned to a country he has little affection for, to a house he hates and his sister who shows early signs of dementia. Bound by duty, he is struggling to cope with her deterioration. Sustained by music, argument and research Joseph longs for order and would like to sell the house and move somewhere warm.

Into this heady mix their step-nephew, filmmaker Thomas Burstyn arrives to make a film. In following the lives of these two eccentric and complex people he uncovers his recent history and must confront his fractured relationship with his own brother.

About

Thomas Burstyn CSC, FRSA – Writer/Director/Cinematographer
Director and cinematographer Thomas Burstyn CSC, FRSA is a multi-award winning, Emmy nominated, Oscar short-listed filmmaker with 35 plus years experience as a director and cinematographer.

Tom trained at the National Film Board of Canada as a documentary maker, before enjoying great success in the feature film industry. Canadian born, Burstyn directed the multi-award winning documentary One Man, One Cow, One Planet, This Way of Life among others. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and has dual New Zealand / Canadian citizenship. Burstyn was born in Montreal, Canada, on Jan 3 1954.

Sumner Burstyn – Writer/Producer
Sumner Burstyn founded Cloud South Films (NZ) with Tom Burstyn in 2005 and Cloud South North Films (Canada) in 2013. She has produced three feature documentaries, a number of television commercials and instructional films. Sumner has line-produced documentaries for the NFB (Buying Sex) and the Public Schools of Los Angeles. She is widely published in New Zealand and was an award winning social issues columnist and features writer. Her previous film This Way of Life was shortlisted for an Oscar and won 12 international awards and sold to 22 countries.

An earlier film One Man, One Cow, One Planet has won multiple awards and sold to 16 countries. Her book based on This Way of Life was published by HarperCollins in 2012. She is currently working on an historical fiction, a documentary about her lost father, a famous Formula 1 driver and a documentary about the poly-sexual artist Stephen Lack. She is a New Zealand citizen and a Canadian Permanent Resident.

Trish Dolman - Producer
Trish has been writing, directing and producing for 18 years and is one of Canada’s leading film and television producers. In 1997, she founded Screen Siren Pictures, a Vancouver based production company known for quality, innovation, fiscal responsibility and discovering new talent.

SOME KIND OF LOVE (2014, Canada 82min.) Writer/Director/Cinematographer, Thomas Burstyn, Writer/Producer Sumner Burstyn. Producer Trish Dolman. Composer:John Korsrud.

SOME KIND OF LOVE is distributed in Canada by Union Pictures, an independent Canadian film distribution & marketing company.

- 30 –

© Scoop Media