JBFC Announces Partnership with Actors Fund

From JBFC: The Jacob Burns Film Center (JBFC) announced today a partnership with The Actors Fund on a new ongoing film series, Life on the Stage: Conversation and Film. The series will focus on the stories, work, and lives of people in the performing arts.

JBFC is known for connecting audiences to filmmakers through special events and post-screening discussions. Over the years the JBFC audience has gotten behind-the-scenes accounts of the process of filmmaking from the perspectives of directors, producers, actors, writers, and more. Partnering with The Actors Fund allows JBFC to bring audiences into the world of the performing arts in a similar way. Life on the Stage goes behind the curtain to portray the lives and creative journeys of people who bring us live performance.

JBFC Director of Programming Brian Ackerman said “The Actors Fund supports the full world of the stage—not just actors, but dancers, musicians, composers, and all professionals in the performing arts and entertainment. This partnership will take us into the creative world of live performers and the JBFC will put those worlds up on the big screen. We are looking forward to working with The Actors Fund on a series that will bridge the worlds of film and the performing arts.”

“There’s nothing like the Jacob Burns Film Center, a dynamic nonprofit educational and cultural organization,” said Joe Benincasa, CEO of The Actors Fund. “It is one of the most successful art houses in the country presenting the best of independent, documentary, and world cinema, and we are excited about our partnership.”

Life on the Stage: Conversation and Film kicks off on May 1 with Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, a new documentary from Lonny Price, who has directed such legendary performers as Glenn Close, Audra McDonald, and Emma Thompson. Best Worst Thingchronicles the exciting rise and disastrous fall of the first production of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, which closed after just 16 performances in 1981. After the screening, Tony-nominated and Emmy-winning actress Liz Callaway, who made her Broadway debut in Merrily, and filmmaker and Lonny Price, who also starred in the ill-fated production, will speak in a conversation moderated by Tony-winning Broadway producer and Emmy-winning director Dori Berinstein. A reception will follow the conversation.

Image via Pixabay