Council Biography

Allison Anders

Writer/Director
Allison Anders has established herself as one of the few women directing films with strong female characters - films whose central themes have dealt with working class people, women in relation to men, and women raising kids without a male partner.

While still at film school, Anders made the cult film Border Radio, a dark story about the Los Angeles punk rock scene, co-written and co-directed with fellow students Kurt Voss and Dean Lent. Starring John Doe of X and Dave Alvin of the Blasters, Border Radio was nominated for Best Feature of 1989 by the Independent Feature Project.

In 1989, Anders was approached to turn an obscure paperback, Don't Look and It Won't Hurt, into a film which became Gas Food Lodging after Anders completely reworked the story and characters to match her own perspective. The critically acclaimed feature, released domestically in 1992, starred Brooke Adams, Ione Skye and Fairuza Balk.

After debuting at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as the Berlin Film Festival, Fairuza Balk won the IFP/W Spirit Award for Best Actress in 1992. Anders also won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best New Director for Gas Food Lodging.

In 1995, Anders collaborated with independent filmmakers Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino to create Four Rooms, an outrageous four-part comedy filled with intrigue and irony. Anders' segment, titled "The Missing Ingredient," pays tribute to the female archetype.

Raised in rural Kentucky, Anders spent her teens hitchhiking across the country, resulting in a series of adventures that often ended in jails and foster homes - experiences she credits with giving her raw inspiration for her cinematic portraits of rural Americans.

At 18, Anders moved to England and returned expecting her first child. While raising her child in Los Angeles, she worked as a waitress and enrolled in UCLA Film School, where she won several prestigious awards, including the $20,000 Nicholas Fellowship from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Samuel Goldwyn Award for her screenplay Lost Highway.

While at UCLA, Anders became enamored of German director Wim Wenders and, after writing him sheaves of letters, he took time out from a trip to Los Angeles to see her first Super-8 film. Wenders immediately invited Anders to work on his acclaimed feature Paris, Texas.

Anders' Mi Vida Loca, a romantic love story set in the barrios of Los Angeles, made its world premiere at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival and opened nationally in the summer of 1994.

In 1995, Anders was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship - the 'Genius Award.'

Anders' Grace of My Heart, which she wrote and directed for Gramercy Pictures, was released in September 1996. A bright, honest look at a woman struggling to find her own vice in the male-dominated world of music, Grace of My Heart is set in the heyday of the Brill Building. Grace of My Heart stars Illeana Douglas, John Turturro, Eric Stoltz, Bruce Davison, Patsy Kensit, Matt Dillon and Jennifer Leigh Warren and includes original music written by song-writing teams both past and present including Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach, Dave Stewart and Carol Bayer Sager, Los Lobos and Gerry Goffin as well as David Baerwald, Larry Klein and Leslie Gore.

Anders' latest project Sugar Town (with Kurt Voss) looks at the has-beens and wanna-bes of the rock and roll industry. The film was featured as the centerpiece premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 1999 and will be released by October Films/USA Films on September 17, 1999. The film stars Rosanna Arquette, Ally Sheedy, Lucinda Jenney, Beverly D'Angelo, John Taylor, Martin Kemp, Michael Des Barres and Larry Klein. Next, Anders will direct Things Behind the Sun, the story of a young journalist whose dark memories are awakened when she is sent to interview a rock singer.

Anders is a mother of three children: Tiffany, Devon and Ruben. She is currently is living in London.