Directors' Bios
ANNA BODEN (Director)
Anna Boden moved from her hometown of Newton, Massachusetts to New York City in 1997 to study cinema and English at Columbia University. On a short hiatus from school, Anna helped develop a filmmaking course for students in the Talent Search program, a program for first-generation college-bound youth.
RYAN FLECK (Director)
Ryan Fleck moved from Oakland, California to New York in 1997 to study filmmaking at NYU. His student film Struggle, detailing a racial confrontation on the set of a film about the life of former Black Panther Assata Shakur, received the Carl Lerner Award for Social & Humanitarian Significance and also screened in the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.
Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck began their artistic collaboration in 2002 on documentary short Have You Seen This Man? The short won several festival awards, premiered on PBS in 2003, and airs regularly on the Independent Film Channel.
Their most recent short film, Gowanus, Brooklyn, premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, where it was awarded the grand jury prize in short filmmaking. It also screened at New Directors/New Films in 2004. Gowanus, Brooklyn was based on the feature-length script, Half Nelson, which Anna and Ryan co-wrote and developed at the Sundance Screenwriters’. It will go into production over the Summer of 2005. Filmmaker Magazine recently named Ryan and Anna two of the 25 New Faces of Indie Film for 2004.
Jóvenes Rebeldes (Young Rebels) is Anna and Ryan’s first feature-length project.
