Filmmaker Ryan Sullivan made his highly-anticipated public debut at the 5th Annual Berlin Porn Film Festival screening of Island, his groundbreaking expose of Treasure Island Media. The documentary was viewed by a full house at the popular Movimento Kino Theater.
Ryan Sullivan was born in Grand Island, Nebraska in 1985 and began studying film during high school after watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo for the first time. In school his friends used to call him Charlie Starkweather, because he shot everything with his camera.
John Sullivan – Ryan Sullivan’s Brother
In 2008, he received a grant from the Experimental Video Art Project in Omaha to fund his first film, which was lost when the lab accidentally destroyed his only print. After this setback, he left his small-town life for San Francisco and began documenting the lives of pornographers he met, the footage of which eventually became the basis for his documentary Island.
“I didn’t know what it would be like to watch Island with an audience. But people really got into it—you could feel them responding -connecting to the story of my brother John Sullivan and me. It turned out to be an amazing experience! The emotional outpouring from the audience caught me off guard,” the humble 25-year-old Nebraskan filmmaker confessed. “I began this as a very personal journey. I didn’t realize people were connecting so deeply with it until I saw them crying. It’s really motivating me to keep following the story, no matter how painful it may get.”
Ryan Sullivan in Berlin
Island had its festival debut last year at Mix Film Festival Brasil. In addition to Berlin, it has screened at porn film festivals in Paris and Hamburg, and has been invited to the 2011 Tel Aviv GLBT International Film Festival (TLVFest) in Israel.
A DVD release of Island is scheduled for later this year. A free copy will be included with our much awaited release-What I Can’t See 3.
To see all the episodes of Ryan Sullivan’s Island visit: www.ryansullivansisland.com
Are you ever going to have a US screening?