Cabrini Opens

I haven’t posted in a while.

There’s a reason. It’s one I’ve written about before, most recently in a piece titled Walking and Talking, in which I wrote about my inclination to focus on one thing at a time.

That’s what I’ve been doing. Focusing.

Following a round of meetings on a new film project last fall, I’ve been pretty much focusing on meeting a fast-approaching May deadline. So far, the writing is on track, which means pretty much everything else will remain on hold until then.

Nevertheless, on Tuesday I got the chance to come up for air when my project partners invited me to the cast-and-crew screening of their latest film Cabrini, a remarkable biopic on the life of activist and humanitarian Francesca Cabrini.

Cabrini star Cristiana Dell’Anna and Christopher Connolly at the LA office of Jonathan Sanger and M. Jones.

Starring  Cristiana Dell’Anna, John Lithgow, and David Morse, Cabrini opens Friday in over 3,000 theatres across the country.

Tuesday’s screening was held in upstate New York, where much of the movie was filmed, with a backlot in South Buffalo transformed into a sprawling New York City shanty town, circa 1900.

With additional scenes shot in Rome, Cabrini is a visually stunning film, with images that transport the viewer into the past as effectively as any movie I’ve seen in quite some time.

A backlot in South Buffalo transformed into a New York City shanty town, circa 1900.

My hosts at the cast-and-crew screening were Jonathan Sanger (Elephant Man, Vanilla Sky, Marshall) and M. Jones (Marshall)—the production team that along with Christopher Connolly is developing the project that I’m working on now. More on that soon.

Until then … here’s the trailer for Cabrini, a film set in the early 1900s that is very much a story for our time.