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Jean Seberg documentary at CR Film Festival

CEDAR RAPIDS – The award-winning documentary Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg is an official selection at the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival and will be showcased at the Collins Road Theatres, 1462 Twixt Town Road, Marion April 1 and 2. Show times and ticket information will be available at www.crifm.org. Emmy nominated filmmakers Garry McGee of McMarr, Ltd., and Kelly Rundle and Tammy Rundle of Fourth Wall Films will appear with the film.

Selected from 18,000 aspiring actresses at age 17, Marshalltown’s Jean Seberg made her acting debut 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 in director Jean-Luc Godard’s groundbreaking French New Wave film Breathless. Movie Star is the first documentary film to focus on the private side of the famous actress and examines Seberg’s very public American and international film career, civil rights era activism and her mysterious, untimely death in Paris in 1979.

The film features exclusive on-camera interviews with Seberg’s family, including her sister Mary Ann Seberg, and her former husband Francois Moreuil (Playtime); friends and film colleagues, including Mylene Demongeot (Bonjour Tristesse) and film producer/director Nicolas Gessner (Diamonds are Brittle), musician Jude Rawlins (Subterraneans), musician Mark Adams-Westin (Amy & Adams) and former Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown; as well as never-before-seen private photographs, home movie footage and rare movie and behind-the-scenes film clips.

“She was a person, like all of us, who made good choices and bad choices,” said producer/director McGee. “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.”

“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 Rundle.

The Rundles’ new documentary River to River: Iowa’s Forgotten Highway 6 is also an Official Selection at the Cedar Rapids Film Festival and will screen during the weekend.

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 writing the documentary The Last Wright. The Rundles received a Regional Emmy nomination for their documentaries Letters Home to Hero Street (co-produced with WQPT) and Country School: One Room – One Nation.

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