Member Screening: Battlefield: Home – Breaking the Silence and Twice Upon A Time 

Member Screening: Battlefield: Home – Breaking the Silence and Twice Upon A Time 
Event: Tuesday Mar. 27, 2018

Join us for this month’s NYWIFT Member Screening Series featuring Battlefield: Home – Breaking the Silence by Anita Sugimura Holsapple(Director/Writer/Producer) and Patricia Lee Stotter (Composer) and Twice Upon A Time by Iliana Guibert (Writer, Producer, Lead Actor). The filmmakers will be available for a Q&A immediately following the screening.

The screening series provides members with the opportunity to show their work in a theatrical setting. Screenings take place at Anthology Film Archives, followed by networking at a nearby bar.

Battlefield: Home – Breaking the Silence
Anita Sugimura Holsapple (Director/Writer/Producer)
Patricia Lee Stotter (Composer)
68 mins, 2017, Documentary

Every warrior, who ever went to battle, is still there. Every family that warrior came home to, joined that battle. For them, long after the flags have retired, the weapons have been stored, the histories have been written, the war never ends. For the warrior… For the family. But what makes war even more dangerous? It is the silence that warriors and families hold; that protective shield of honor and dignity often masking the pain of uncertainty and fear. It is the struggle to heal amidst the darkness of fleeting hope and despair. Battlefield: Home – Breaking The Silence delves into the silent pain, exposes the challenges, and unlocks the generational impact of trauma.

Anita Sugimura Holsapple is a Japanese-American filmmaker with more than 14 years in broadcast television in the U.S. and Japan as a news producer/reporter. She has a unique perspective on life and culture. Raised abroad with a Japanese mother and American father, her view of the world is seen through the eyes of eastern and western philosophies. It is because of this influence that she seeks to tell stories that empower those voices often left unnoticed or unheard. Her impassioned heart and creativity combines a variety of sensibilities that she hopes to further capture as she enhances her journey through film. Despite being a “late bloomer” to the film industry, Holsapple does not believe that her age inhibits her, but rather her experiences only adds to the flavor of what she seeks to create. Battlefield: Home – Breaking The Silenceis Holsapple’s first film, and was inspired by her own experiences as military child during the Vietnam War. Her prior experience includes work on The Amazing Race, serving as a military liaison for Jon Gries’ film, Pickin’ & Grinnin’, and camera operator for the short documentary, Eden House – Keeping The Promise. Holsapple is a member of the International Documentary Association, Film Independent and New York Women In Film & Television.

Patricia Lee Stotter is a two-time Emmy Award winning composer/producer/writer. While composer-in-residence at The Writers Theatre, Stotter and poet, Paul Genega’s, musical, Happily Ever After was produced there.  Other work from that period includes Unchained Memories (HBO), Spirit to Spirit (PBS), Discovering Women (PBS), From the Ashes (Deborah Shaffer/Bacchus films), Reading from the Heart (HBO), Three Sisters (HBO) and Sesame Street. In 2001, while composing for the films of others, Stotter began writing and producing her own theatre/film projects including the animated film Suicide Notes with Elise Tak and Flashback, a testimonial theatre piece with Penny Coleman and Elena Michelson. In 2008, Stotter and Marcia Rock launched the social media/Facebook groups of the the award-winning multi-platform documentary project Service: When Women Come Marching Home. The film that grew out of those groups was screened on Capitol Hill on June 19, 2012, broadcast on PBS, and won an Emmy. Rock and Stotter continued their work about women in the military with the short film, Soldiers Period, picked up by BuzzFeed. Three other films Stotter worked on have been screened on the hill: Justice Denied; Warriors Return; and Is Anybody Listening? While (always) working as a composer for hire, Stotter’s own works-in-progress are Paging Dr. Faustus and We Are All Prisoners of War.

Iliana Guibert (Writer, Producer, Lead Actor)
Twice Upon A Time
2015, 13:45 min, Scripted
9/11 widow Isabel, still mourning the loss of her husband, prepares to send her only child off to college. Concerned friends decide it is time for a playful intervention and persuade Isabel to join an online dating site, but things are not always what they seem.

Iliana Guibert, a native New Yorker, is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. Until recently, she spent most of her career in the corporate sector where she gained extensive business skills and sales know-how which she applies to her work in the entertainment industry. She plans to further use this knowledge as she expands her work to include producing and directing. When Guibert is not working as an actress, she sits on the boards and committees of several foundations, most of which are committed to helping youth in need and children who are chronically or terminally ill. Guibert was married to her high school sweetheart Thomas until his death on September 11th when he attended a meeting in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. According to The New York Times, Thomas’ call to her was the last known outgoing call before the tower collapsed. They had one child together, a daughter, who had just turned 4 at the time of his death. Guibert has appeared in several WTC documentaries and has been featured in various magazines and news segments for her humanitarian efforts, philanthropy and inspiration.