Emmy-nominated filmmaker Garry McGee and Emmy award-winning filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle are pleased to announce that "Jean Seberg: Actress Activist Icon" is a By-Invitation Official Selection at the 2022 California Capital International Documentary Film Festival in Sacramento, California. The feature-length documentary will screen at the festival on June 11th at 5:30 p.m. Visit CalCapDocFest.org for more information.
The California Capital International Documentary Film Festival at Rancho Cordova will be the first documentary film festival in the Sacramento Region. Hosted by the California Capital Arts Foundation, this event will feature nonfiction cinematography from around the globe June 10-12th.
“We have curated an exciting array of film selections for this year's viewings along with special guest panels and events,” producer Charles Lago, stated on the festival website.
Marshalltown, Iowa’s Jean Seberg made her acting debut at age 18 in Otto Preminger’s 1957 Saint Joan and starred in Hollywood films Lilith, Paint Your Wagon, and the blockbuster Airport, among others. She is best known for her performance with co-star Jean-Paul Belmondo in director Jean-Luc Godard’s groundbreaking French New Wave film Breathless.
Seberg’s offscreen civil rights activism and her financial support for the Black Panther Party made her a target of the F.B.I.’s COINTELPRO and their plan to “neutralize” her initiated a downward spiral leading to her mysterious and untimely death in Paris.
“The documentary strips away the Hollywood gossip, the national media hype, and the F.B.I. propaganda to find a young woman of conscience embroiled in the important issues of her day, while also carving out a unique and important international film career,” said producer Kelly Rundle of Fourth Wall Films.
“We are honored to have our documentary on Jean Seberg invited to screen at the inaugural California Capital Film Festival in Sacramento,” said producer/director Garry McGee. “Audiences will see that though she was an international movie star, Jean was a person, like all of us, who made good choices and bad choices. There were things that happened to her that she didn’t deserve. Jean was just trying to do what was right. You see a consistent thread throughout her life of reaching out to people who had fewer opportunities than she had.”
“Jean Seberg: Actress Activist Icon” is the first documentary film to focus on the private side of the international movie star, combining exclusive interviews with Jean’s family, including her sister Mary Ann Seberg and former husband François Moreuil; co-star Myalene Demongeot, director Nicolas Gessner, and former Black Panther Party leader and Jean’s friend Elaine Brown. The film features never-before-seen private photographs, home movie footage, and original music by musicians Mark and Amy Adams-Westin of Amy & Adams.
“Jean Seberg: Actress Activist Icon” was funded in part with grants from Humanities Iowa, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Iowa Arts Council. The Historical Society of Marshall County served as a fiscal sponsor for the project.
The Rundles’ films have won a regional Emmy® and received nine Mid-America Emmy® nominations. Garry McGee is the author of “Jean Seberg: Breathless” and co-author of “Neutralized: The FBI vs Jean Seberg” and “The Films of Jean Seberg”. He received a regional Emmy® nomination for the documentary The Last Wright.
For more information about the documentary project visit JeanSebergMovie.com.