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Logline

GenXX’s goals are to raise awareness that Gen X women are an asset thanks to their knowledge, wisdom, and experience, and to get more Gen X women hired to direct feature films and television.

We have already met with multiple studios and diversity executives, and we are raising money to increase our awareness campaign through a major push in the press and media. We are also raising money to finance an initiative that funds multiple film and TV projects helmed by Gen X women directors.

Currently there is an unconscious bias that mid-career people should be further along “if they were any good,” and they must be reminded that it was actually that, pre #MeToo, they never had opportunity — and that there are many experienced independent directors ready to step in.

Founded by a group of Gen X directors (Maria Burton, Nandi Bowe, Susan Dynner and Monique Sorgen), we discovered that between us, we have directed numerous projects, won countless awards, and participated in programs including ABC/Disney, CBS, SONY, Ryan Murphy’s HALF, ProjectHER, Sundance, Black Magic Collective, DGA’s DDI, DGA’s Learning Tree, and Film Independent. We have premiered and/or won festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Cannes, AFI — yet have never gotten a shot at the studio level. We created the GenXX initiative to promote the women of Generation X, who, like us, have been enthusiastically pursuing their goals and building accolades for years.

GenX women directors are also great role models and mentors for younger women coming up in the industry.
 

Meet the Team

Susan Dynner – Director/Producer/Writer
Award-winning Director/Producer/Writer Susan Dynner, a recent Sundance Stories of Change Directing Fellow, and current Blackmagic Studio Feature Directing Fellow just completed directing/producing The Soul Trader, a short proof of concept for a feature film or series starring Shane West, Shauna Grace and Donna Mills. She is also currently filming her documentary about women in magic (she is a Magician Member of the Magic Castle). Dynner is gearing up to direct/produce Fall of Eden, a drama starring Dylan McDermott and Brianna Hildebrand. Before that, she directed/produced, Code Blue: A Love Story starring Andy Dick, for which she was awarded the Sony TV Directing Fellowship. She produced Free Ride, starring Anna Paquin (she was a Film Independent Producing Fellow), After Porn Ends, and she produced/directed Punk’s Not Dead, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, followed by a theatrical world- wide release. She also produced Brick, winner of the Sundance Film Festival. As a Development Executive, Dynner worked for Charlie Sheen and Nick Cassavetes as a VP, and Wolfgang Petersen. Dynner began her career at Richard Donner Productions and Di Novi Pictures. Prior to that, she was a band photographer at age fifteen. Aberration Films has many projects in development.

Maria Burton – Director/Producer/Writer
Named by Variety as “talent to watch,” Burton has directed 6 successful independent feature films, the latest of which are available on Netflix and Amazon. Burton helms Five Sisters Productions with her real-life siblings, through which she directed the pilot for the short form series Old Guy and produced The Happiest Day of His Life (MTV/Logo), Kings, Queens & In-Betweens, and Julia Sweeney’s Letting Go of God (Showtime). She’s been selected for TV Directing fellowships including Disney/ABC, CBS, Ryan Murphy’s HALF, SONY and ProjectHER, for which she wrote and directed the short pilot Good Eggs. Burton has served on the National Board of the DGA, as Co-Chair of the DGA’s WSC and is Emeritus Board of Alliance of Women Directors and a member of Film Fatales. She’s currently developing projects including Mercury 13, a drama inspired by the women tested for the original astronaut program, which has been named to the Athena List, the BitchList/Bechdel List, won a CineStory Fellowship, and is a Nicholl Quarterfinalist.

Monique Sorgen – Director/Producer/Writer
Monique Sorgen is a French-American writer-director who uses comedy to upend the cultural expectations of a woman’s place in society. Raised in an idealistic hippie house, then disillusioned by the realities of the world, her voice is joyfully cynical. She is a fellow in the Sony Directors Program, BlackMagic Collective, and in Alliance of Women Directors’ Directing the Actor Lab. She has written & directed multiple award-winning comedy films, with new work currently on the festival circuit, including: Sorry Not Sorry, Rock A Bye Baby, Codependent Socks! Random Check, and Lying is Complicated. She’s also directed branded reality series, other narrative shorts, and music videos that were acquired by the Disney Channel. She began her career as a director’s assistant on network television shows including Star Trek and In the House (with LL Cool J). Since then, she has been a shadowing director in television with Lesli Linka Glatter, Pamela Fryman (How I Met Your Mother), Mary Lou Belli (The Mrs. Pat Show & S.W.A.T.), and Michael Spiller (Mixed-ish). As a writer, she’s developed screenplays with Imagine, DiNovi, USA Network, Morgan Freeman’s Revelations, and David Oyelowo’s Yoruba Saxon, among many others. She has also written a novel and published play.

Nandi Bowe – Director/Writer
Raised in New York and San Francisco, Bowe began her professional career in film and television after graduating from Howard University. She worked as an Assistant Director on many projects including, Do The Right Thing, Daughters of The Dust, and Hocus Pocus, among many more. She was a Staff Writer on the X-Files spin-off, The Lone Gunmen. She attended AFI as a Directing Fellow was a DGA/ABC Disney Directing Fellow. She has written and directed eight short films garnering a number of awards for Statistically Speaking, starring Alfre Woodard and Garry Marshall which aired on ShowTime and HBO. Her episode Voodoo from the Women’s Series of Passion, was featured on Starz. After the devastating diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis, Bowe moved with her husband and three sons to Mumbai, India for three years where she wrote her memoir, Hollywood to Bollywood. She is currently developing a television series starring Tiffany Haddish and produced by Frank Spotnitz based on that story.

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Contact

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