Ellen Cassedy

“BEAUTIFUL HILLS OF BROOKLYN” OFFICIAL SELECTION AT D.C. INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL, March 7, 2009, at 1 p.m. FOR TICKETS: www.dciff.org

WINS "FIRST PRIZE, BEST SHORT FILM" IN LOS ANGELES AT BEVERLY HILLS HI-DEF FILM FEST, January, 2009

WINS SHORTS COMPETITION AT NEW YORK'S BIG APPLE FILM FESTIVAL, November, 2008

BEAUTIFUL HILLS OF BROOKLYN won first prize for BEST SHORT FILM at the Beverly Hills Hi-Def Film Festival in January, 2009, at the Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills, CA.

The film won the Best Short Film Award at the Big Apple Film Festival in November, 2008, at the world-famous Tribeca Cinemas in New York, NY.

The film is now showing in the Connecticut Film Festival (www.ctfilmfest.com)throughout the state.

Directed by Ragnar Freidank, Joanna Merlin stars in the screen adaptation of Ellen Cassedy’s award-winning one-woman play, in a performance described by Sam Waterston as “an exquisite piece of acting.”

BEAUTIFUL HILLS OF BROOKLYN is based on a true story, drawn from the diary of Jessie Singer Sylvester, an elderly woman living on a pension, confronting the changes in her life and her beloved Brooklyn neighborhood.

The film moves effortlessly from present time to reverie and is told entirely in the words of the diary, interwoven with the Walt Whitman poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” The rhapsodic poetry, which speaks of generations reaching out to one another across the boundaries of time, vibrates against the simple diction of the diary, illuminating a small but important life.

The film opened the 2nd International Russians Abroad Film Festival in Moscow November 7-14 and was screened in the Show Off Your Shorts Festival in Hollywood in February, 2009.

Contact: Shawna Brakefield
The Brakefield Company
213-910-2478
shawna@​thebrakefieldcompany.com