Jayce Bartok is known as an actor for his roles in Richard Linklater's Suburbia, Sam Raimi's Spiderman and Tom McCarthy's The Station Agent, but asked him where he's putting his efforts these days and he'll tell you in screenplays. His 2007 screenplay debut, The Cake Eaters, directed by Mary Stuart Masterson and starring Kristen Stewart, made its rounds in film festivals.
His follow up film, Fall to Rise, which he's written and directed, comes to the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival showing on Saturday, Nov. 22 at 3 p.m. at Cinema Paradiso in Fort Lauderdale and on Sunday, Nov. 23 at 4 p.m. at Cinema Paradiso Hollywood.
The dance film is about a renowned principal dancer whose injury forces her out of her comfort zone and into motherhood as she struggles to return to dance with the help of another former dancer. Jayce's wife, Tiffany Bartok, is producing.
The film was made through fundraisers , donations, and also through crowdfunding. In fact, the filmmakers are still pitching on indiegogo.com to get help for post production including color correcting, sound editing and the writing of a score.
After a story ran in the New York Times in March of 2012 about their crowdsourcing to make the film, the pair thought they'd see a jump in their goal (at the time they were trying to get $50,000; the Times reported in 18 months they had raised $21,596). The press didn't do much to help them get the bucks. "We soon shifted over to micro-investments." The top line cast with some recognizable names no doubt helped donations – Katherine Crockett plays former dancer Lauren in the film; Crockett is best known as a premier dance with Martha Graham Dance Company. Daphne Rubin-Vega plays the other former dancer, Sheila Jules; she has a bunch of theater awards to her credit, especially for her performance as the original Mimi in the Broadway show Rent.
Tamara Tunie, known around the world for her role as medical examiner Melinda Warner on Law and Order: SVU, plays Annika, a dance company administrator who is trying to save a failing organization.
The original script, entitled Tiny Dancer, was about, says Jayce, "a dancer that was wasting away." But then Black Swan came along and the "project was paused for a second." But then the pair says the script "willed itself into being" when the Baryshnikov Arts Center, occupied by the Martha Graham Dance Company, gave the film its setting for some of its scenes and also gave it its background dancers. "The hardest thing for us was to find a convincing space and to get a bunch of very busy high caliber dancers together, but it came together for us and we had five days to shoot there," says Jayce. "We were petrified; the script hadn't been rewritten and this was April of last year, but the door opened and we realized we were going to have to do it."
The pair thought that creating a dance movie might give them access to grants or other money available from the dance world, "then we realized they are constantly fundraising for their own causes."
The film is a character study into Lauren and Sheila Jules' lives. In one scene, Lauren confides to her pediatrician that she doesn't feel as if she's a good mom. Tiffany says that there was mention that the scene between the doctor and patient be cut, "but that scene is literally something that happened word for word in my life." It remains in the film.
Jayce says that they are in negotiations with two distributors and are confident that the film will get a limited theatrical release and/or show up on video on demand on cable. "We're also hoping to take it to Sundance and to South By Southwest. It's always been at the Napa Valley Film Festival and it's on the schedule for the Dance on Camera Film Festival at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in January.
"There's some momentum building," says Jayce.
The pair tells the same story that's on their Indiegogo page, but it seems more dramatic hearing it said rather than reading it.
"When we began the film, our son couldn't speak," says Tiffany. "And now he is running around yelling 'finish this movie!' Jake finishes.
Next up, Jayce and Co. will receive a true crime thriller, Red River, starring Patricia Arquette, Betsy Brandt, Jason Isaacs and Peter Facinelli.
"We'll continue to make films and learn how to survive as a company." Jayce and Tiffany owns Vinyl Foote Productions, a company that specializes in the development, packaging and distribution of motion pictures and documentaries.
"We're still trying to find out way but we want to make movies from scripts that we think are cool on a lower budget model and be able to sustain the company. "
The festival closes Sunday, Nov. 23.
Now in its 29th year the festival screened over 175 American Independent and World Cinema features, shorts and documentaries.
For additional filmmaker guests, events, parties and receptions,
check the schedule online at www.FLiFF.com
Tickets are available in advance online at www.FLiFF.com
or call the Box-office at 954-525-FILM (3456)
