The Art of Creative Collaboration with Celine Rattray and Trudie Styler

A conversation with Celine Rattray and Trudie Styler, the dynamic duo behind Maven Pictures. They will discuss their collaboration on independent features including the upcoming Freak Show directed by Styler (featuring Bette Midler, Laverne Cox and Abigail Breslin). Also on their slate of upcoming films are Wildling (starring Bel Powley and Liv Tyler) and American Honey (starring Sasha Lane and Shia LaBeouf) which are in post-production.

Celine Rattray has over thirty independent films under her belt as a producer, including twelve Sundance Film Festival selections, five Toronto Film Festival selections and one Berlin International Film Festival selection. She won a Golden Globe and received an Oscar nomination for Lisa Cholodenko’s 2010 Oscar-nominated hit film The Kids Are All Right, starring Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. Prior to producing film, Rattray was the Director of Marketing and Business Development for HBO. Rattray graduated with a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy from Oxford University. She currently serves on the Board of BAFTA New York.

Trudie Styler is an award-winning and prolific film producer, director, environmentalist, human rights activist and UNICEF Ambassador. Her film credits include the documentaries Boys from Brazil, Moving the Mountain, The Sweatbox (which she co-directed), A Kind of Childhood and Yes We Can! The Lost Art of Oratory. Styler was integral in discovering Guy Ritchie and executive produced his first two films — Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Since then she has showed her skill for recognizing new talent by producing Duncan Jones’s feature film debut, Moon. Widely acclaimed critically as well as a commercial success, Moon earned a BAFTA Award for Duncan Jones and a BAFTA nomination for Styler. Alongside her partner at Maven Pictures, Celine Rattray, she has produced among other titles the award-winning Filth starring James McAvoy, and Still Alice, for which Julianne Moore won an Oscar. Styler is now in post-production with her own directorial debut, Freak Show, which stars Bette Midler, Alex Lawther and Abigail Breslin.

Alexis Alexanian (Moderator), President of Production at Locomotive, is an independent producer with over 20 years experience in the motion picture industry. Her credits include Richard Linklater’s Tape, Ethan Hawke’s Chelsea Walls, Rebecca Miller’s Independent Spirit Award-winner Personal Velocity, Gary Winick’s Tadpole, Peter Hedges’s Pieces of April, and Ethan Hawke’s The Hottest State. Alexanian also produced the international television series Long Way Round (Bravo, Sky), starring Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. She is currently in post-production on the new feature film Look Away, starring Aidan Turner, Chloe Sevigny and Matthew Broderick. Alexanian is President of  NYWIFT’s Board of Directors. 

Special thanks to the SVA Theatre for hosting this event.