independent-film
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Justine LaViolette and the Night That Refused to End
A failed date introduced a filmmaker to her future business partner. Six years, several refusals and one astonishing opening-night queue later, Justine LaViolette had helped turn a familiar queer daydream into a permanent Brooklyn address.
Chris Burns Put Marketing on the Hook for Results - Then Learned When to Let Go
At Kalderos, Chris Burns helped turn a specialist compliance product into a larger business story. His next lesson arrived after the acquisition: a fixer also has to know when to leave the field.
Adrienne Becker
Adrienne Becker is the CEO and co-founder of Level Forward, the public-benefit entertainment studio she launched in 2018 with filmmaker Abigail Disney. From a Los Angeles base, she finances and produces films and stage work that pair compelling stories with real-world advocacy - a slate that has earned a combined 37 Tony nominations (Jagged Little Pill, Oklahoma!, Slave Play, What the Constitution Means to Me, Suffs) and Oscar-recognized films (The Assistant, Red White and Blue). A former CEO of DailyCandy and SVP at Nielsen and IAC who got her start on Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, Becker treats entertainment as a tool for economic and cultural change.
Sam Pressman
Sam Pressman is the CEO of Pressman Film, the storied independent studio his father Edward R. Pressman founded in 1969 and that backed American Psycho, Wall Street, Badlands and The Crow. A Stanford Film & Media Studies graduate who grew up on his father's sets, Sam took the helm after Ed's death in 2023 and is betting that independent cinema's next chapter runs on radical filmmakers, crowd-sourced financing, virtual reality and AI - while keeping his father's motto, 'every film is a miracle,' close.