Vanessa Schwartz

A neurotic worker ant in love with a rebellious princess rises to unlikely stardom when he switches places with a soldier. Signing up to march in a parade, he ends up under the command of a bloodthirsty general. But he's actually been enlisted to fight against a termite army.

The epic life story of Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968), a French screenwriter, director and producer, true pioneer of cinema, the first person who made a narrative fiction film; author of hundreds of movies, but banished from history books. Ignored and forgotten. At last remembered.

Throughout the 19th century, imaginative and visionary artists and inventors brought about the advent of a new look, absolutely modern and truly cinematographic, long before the revolutionary invention of the Lumière brothers and the arrival of December 28, 1895, the historic day on which the first cinema performance took place.

From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock, ‘Bird by Bird with Annie’ offers an intimate portrait of a writer and her craft, interweaving the story of Anne Lamott's life—in itself a deeply moving tale of addiction and redemption, grief and joy, intellect and faith—with a year's worth of interviews, public lectures, and footage of the writer at work, focusing particularly on Lamott's candid, humorous, and disarmingly straightforward advice on the struggles and joys of writing. The author's reassurance and guidance concerning the process of writing—which has little resemblance to its glorified image—becomes a stirring call to action celebrating the potential of each individual, the silencing of our inner critics, and the courage to create something honest and meaningful. Poignant and inspirational, ‘Bird by Bird with Annie’ takes us deep into Anne Lamott's intoxicatingly brave world, one in which writing is a means of finding out who we are, how we live, and why we're here.

A mildly irreverent reinterpretation of Bible events, with God's cosmic janitor claiming—by way of covering up his own lapses—credit for everything from the Flood to the Ascension.