- Jill Sprecher
Jill Sprecher is an American film director
Biography
A graduate from
University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree inphilosophy andliterature , Sprecher relocated toNew York to study film.In addition to being a director, she has worked as a coordinator, production manager and line producer on both studio and independent features, often to pay the bills for her own film efforts. She studied film directing with
Robert Wise and, prior to making her directorial debut withClockwatchers (1997), she studied improvisational technique in Manhattan. For five years she served as a judge forCableACE Awards .Clockwatchers debuted at theSundance Film Festival and went on to screen at over a dozen international festivals. It won a Best Film prize at the Torino International Festival of Young Cinema of 1997.Next up was
Thirteen Conversations About One Thing , (executive produced byMichael Stipe ) a film that received more attention and critical acclaim, but reportedly put Jill $150,000 into personal debt to finance it. Poor timing (the film was picked up 3 days before theSeptember 11, 2001 attacks onNew York City ), among other factors, led to the film mostly flying under the radar in the mainstream world.She often works with her sister
Karen Sprecher , who writes, they are sometimes referred to as "the Coen sisters" a reference to fellow midwesternersJoel and Ethan Coen . Her brother isJeff Sprecher , the founder, Chairman and CEO of IntercontinentalExchange, Inc.On the long gap between films:
"We finished the script for 13 Conversations in eight weeks--it was finished before Clockwatchers actually came out. What happened was I had to do a lot of traveling with Clockwatchers to festivals and we actually won a prize at the Turin Festival. Thankfully, it was a cash prize, about $18,000, and we took that money and worked on 13 Conversations. But right after Clockwatchers we actually went back to doing temp work and trying to raise funding to make our next movie, and suddenly it's three-and-a-half years later. We took odd jobs, used credit cards--we kept thinking that big break was just right around the corner. I think we would've walked away from it altogether, but periodically something encouraging would happen to keep us going." Fact|date=February 2007
Films
*"
Clockwatchers " (1997)
*"Thirteen Conversations About One Thing " (2001)External links
*imdb name|id=0819613|name=Jill Sprecher
* [http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/notes/jsprecherinterview.htm|One Conversation with Jill Sprecher - a Film Freak Interview by Walter Chaw]
* [http://www.reel.com/reel.asp?node=features/interviews/sprecher|And one more thing - "Filmmaker Jill Sprecher chats about fate, karma, and 13 Conversations." reel.com]
* [http://www.dvdtalk.com/13converstaionsinterview.html|DVDTalk Interview]
* [http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/features/article226059.ece|Jill Sprecher: As Brave as They Come. The Independent, UK]
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