The Cinema Guild Acquires Before and After Dinner: The Life and Work of Andre Gregory

The Cinema Guild announced today the acquisition of U.S. distribution rights to Cindy Kleine's documentary Before and After Dinner: The Life and Work of André Gregory, a portrait of the groundbreaking director, actor, artist, and star and co-creator of Louis Malle's landmark film My Dinner with André. It will open theatrically in the spring of 2013 at Film Forum.

Before and After Dinner is an exploration of the life and work of André Gregory - pathfinder, innovator, screen actor, writer, director, teacher, painter and raconteur. Made by prize-winning documentarian Cindy Kleine, the film explores in intimate detail the life of a cultural icon and master storyteller, taking the viewer on an entertaining journey into an amazing, almost unbelievable past. As in My Dinner With André, André's extraordinary storytelling prowess takes us back and forth in time, looking not only at his life but at the nature of time itself, of love and its relation to art, and the creative process.

About André Gregory

André Gregory has been one of the most important forces in the American theatre for nearly forty years. He was one of the original creators of the regional theatre movement in this country as well as the off-Broadway movement in New York. His production of "Alice in Wonderland," now legendary, played in New York for seven years, as well as touring the U.S., Europe, and the Mideast, and was made into a book in collaboration with Richard Avedon. His relationship with Wallace Shawn, which has been ongoing for over thirty years, began with his production of Shawn's "Our Late Night," which was presented at Joseph Papp's Public Theatre.

Shawn and Gregory went on to create My Dinner With André directed by Louis Malle, which has now become an American classic. The partnership of Shawn, Malle and Gregory went on to create the film Vanya on 42nd Street which like My Dinner With André, was hugely successful and has been shown all over the world. In 2000, Gregory directed Wallace Shawn's play, "The Designated Mourner," to universally successful reviews. As an actor, Gregory has performed in a dozen Hollywood films, including films directed by Martin Scorsese (The Last Temptation of Christ), Peter Weir (The Mosquito Coast), and Woody Allen (Celebrity). André Gregory is currently collaborating with Jonathan Demme on a film version of Wally Shawn's adaptation of Ibsen's "Master Builder." The Public Theatre will present "The Designated Mourner" and "Grasses of a Thousand Colors" in the summer of 2013.

About Director Cindy Kleine

Cindy Kleine is a film and video artist whose prolific career began when she was an undergraduate at The Museum School and at the legendary (and long-gone) MIT Film/Video Section, studying with Richard Leacock and Ed Pincus, and among a legion of future filmmakers in the program, including Ross McElwee, Robb Moss and John Gianvito. In line with Boston peers, Kleine has developed a central body of documentary work which are family dramas: camera visits with her grandmother and her sister, and intense probes of her parents' fifty-nine years of a dubious, fractured marriage. Additionally, Kleine has gone outside of family for films about odd artists and off-the-wall musicians; and she's gone inside herself for some deeply personal, poetically framed psychodramas about love lost, the spirit gained.

Kleine's films have been exhibited at numerous international festivals. She has received awards and fellowships from The American Film Institute, The U.S. S-8 Film and Digital Video Festival, The MacDowell Colony, The Bard College MFA Fellowship Program, and The New England Regional Fellowship Program. She has taught filmmaking at Boston College, Harvard University, The Museum School, Boston, and The New School for Social Research.