City Island

• Choosing wisely

  Published on: January 28, 2010

  By Geoffrey Macnab

  In the two years since it was founded, WestEnd Films has prospered in backing titles which have scored theatrical sales in a tough global marketplace. The principals talk to Geoffrey Macnab.

  It was in 2008 that WestEnd Films was formally launched. Schoukroun and Amsellem had been working at Capitol Films, the company Harel and Jane Barclay founded in 1989 and eventually sold to Los Angeles-based entrepreneurs David Bergstein and Ronald N Tutor in 2006.

  Schoukroun and Amsellem’s idea was to set up a boutique-style sales agency which would acquire a handful of films (six to eight) with theatrical potential each year. The pair approached their former boss to see if she was ready to re-enter the sales arena. Harel had originally intended to concentrate on producing through her company Notting Hill Films but was intrigued by the proposition.

  “I felt they were the best team around and I was very happy to partner them,” Harel recalls. She acknowledges that WestEnd - which the three principals co-own -launched in a very different climate from the one she and Barclay had encountered in the early days of Capitol when the video market was thriving and broadcasters were still buying films. “You could get away with more. Now, you really have to cherry-pick,” Harel reflects.

  In launching the company, the first step was to find some strong films to represent. Schoukroun and Amsellem did their rounds of the UK producers.

  “I don’t know how many people we met; I think about 130 people. I didn’t know there were that many producers in England,” says Schoukroun.

  They also attended co-production markets. Raymond De Felitta’s ensemble comedy, City Island, the first film they picked up, which was to star Andy Garcia, proved an auspicious beginning. WestEnd pre-sold the film widely in Cannes 2008, helping it to complete its financing. City Island, which eventually attracted a cast including Alan Arkin, Julianna Margulies and Emily Mortimer, went on to win the audience prize at last year’s Tribeca Festival and Anchor Bay will release it in the US this spring.

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• At Tribeca: 6 Films Worth the Hassle

  Published on: April 22, 2009

  From MovieLine Written by S.T. VanAirsdale

  City Island: I never wanted Raymond De Felitta to direct again after his agonizingly saccharine 2005 dramedy The Thing About My Folks. The synopsis of his latest film — featuring Andy Garcia and Julianna Margulies as a couple with arguably the most sequestered private lives in New York’s most sequestered suburb — didn’t encourage me either. I was wrong. Not because De Felitta has sudden mastery of relationships, style, or anything else, really, but because his cast inhabits an utterly unbelievable premise with genuine presence and soul. I still don’t know what Emily Mortimer was doing in there, but trade her for Alan Arkin’s acting-coach curmudgeon and you break even. And Garcia, all stifled ambition and goombah sincerity, supplies his best work in years. City Island is worth seeing for his amateur-audition sequence alone. Never mind the last five minutes.

   

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• 'City Island' makes it to Tribeca Film Festival

  Published on: April 19, 2009

  Many of us know City Island as the quiet subcontinent of The Bronx. It is where we go for the best seafood and to watch fireworks on the 4th of July. Soon enough, we will also know it as the setting and premise of Raymond De Felitta's new film, titled "City Island".

  The movie, starring Alan Arkin and Andy Garcia, will debut at the Tribeca Film Festival on Sunday, April 26th at 5:30pm.

  Read the full article here.

  

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