CHANTILLY LACE Closing Night Gala

The AFI Los Angeles Film Festival is proud to close its 1993 event with Linda Yellen’s extraordinary Showtime film, Chantilly Lace. the style of John Cassevetes, Yellen has created an ensemble drama around seven fine actresses improvised upon a forty-page outline. Starring JoBeth Williams, Helen Slater, Talia Shire, Ally Sheedy, Martha Plimpton Jill Eikenberry and Lindsay Crouse, Chantilly Lace follows a group of American women meeting three times over the course of a year. Gathering together for a birthday party, a bachelorette party, and finally the funeral of one of their compatriots, the women express their experiences, complexities, hopes and doubts in an undiluted and uncensored fashion. Filmed on a small budget in i mere eight days in Sundance, Utah, Chantilly Lace is a remarkable group venture. Yellen has succeeded in her concept, which she claims was inspired by the preponderance of “incomplete roles for women, who are sketched instead of developed” in contemporary film. Linda Yellen and members of the cast will be present to discuss the film with the audience.