About The Fellowship
Up to five people will be chosen in a rigorous application process. Fellows will be selected by an admissions panel (an assortment of film professionals). During their fellowship year (starting in September), the Fellows will meet with Marcie once a month remotely, with periodic in person gatherings. These monthly meetings (eight to ten in total) will involve guests (directors, writers, distribution professionals, producers, festival programmers, members of the media, etc.) and general community building. In addition, the Fellowship will provide support and direction for the young people entering the film world.
Along with the highly prized networking opportunities the Fellowship will provide, it will also allow the Fellows to further develop their particular areas of interest within the film industry - be it development, screenwriting, production, distribution, advertising, marketing or publicity - in an intimate, creative and supportive environment.
The evening Anna and I spent with the Marcie Bloom Fellowship students was like a casual reunion with old friends. The friendly, insightful conversation left us feeling like we had just experienced a virtual My Dinner with Andre. It was a wonderful time.
-Ryan Fleck Writer, Director
About Marcie Bloom
Marcie’s introduction to and immersion in the film industry began with a college internship at The Film Society of Lincoln Center during the summer of 1978, where she learned to spell, and more importantly, pronounce, names such as Pedro Almodovar, Ismail Merchant, James Ivory, Agnieszka Holland, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Istvan Szabo, Louis Malle, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Maria Luisa Bemberg, Atom Egoyan, Luc Besson, Claire Denis and Nikita Mikhalkov. Over time she worked with every one of these directors.
Says Marcie: “I always dreamt of a career where I would have a reason to be around talented, creative people without being just a ‘groupie.’ “I see the fellowship as a way of ‘giving back’ to a community which has been extremely kind and generous to me, and supportive of me for a long time.” Following her graduation from Cornell University in 1979, she returned to Lincoln Center, where she ultimately became the Film Coordinator of the annual New York Film Festival.
In the spring of 1984, Marcie became Director of Publicity at Triumph Films, a partnership between Columbia Pictures and Gaumont, the legendary French production, distribution and exhibition giant responsible for films such as Francesco Rosi’s BIZET’S CARMEN, Luc Besson’s LE DERNIER COMBAT and Wolfgang Petersen’s DAS BOOT. Marcie continued in publicity at the firm of Smith and Siegal, where she met her own mentor, Lois Smith, and began her long and ongoing relationship with then-Orion Classics partners Michael Barker and Tom Bernard. Among the many Orion Classics projects in which Marcie was involved were Stephen Frears’ MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE, Louis Malle’s AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS, Pedro Almodovar’s WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, Akira Kurosawa’s RAN, Bruno Nuytten’s CAMILLE CLAUDEL, Richard Linklater’s SLACKER, Jim Jarmusch’s MYSTERY TRAIN, Claude Berri’s JEAN DE FLORETTE and MANON OF THE SPRING, and Gabriel Axel’s Oscar-winning BABETTE’S FEAST, for which she conceived and executed the “see the movie, eat the meal” campaign.
Marcie continued in publicity by moving with Lois Smith to PMK Public Relations, where she became a Vice President, maintaining her position as the publicist of all Orion Classics releases, and representing films released by the Samuel Goldwyn Company and Warner Bros.
In the fall of 1989, Barker and Bernard invited Marcie to join them as their partner at Orion Classics, where she became Vice President of Acquisitions. Marcie became a well-known “player” at the Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Locarno, Edinburgh, Venice, Montreal, and Toronto Film Festivals, (and at Milan’s MIFED and L.A.’s AFM Film Markets respectively). In January 1992, Marcie, along with her partners Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, founded Sony Pictures Classics, the specialized film division of Sony Pictures Entertainment. SPC released its first film, Merchant Ivory’s HOWARDS END, on March 13, 1992 to nearly unanimous acclaim, $26 million in domestic box office, and three Academy Awards. As of 2020, Sony Pictures Classics has gone on to be nominated for 153 Academy Awards (including for Best Picture: THE FATHER, AMOUR, CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, HOWARDS END, CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON and CAPOTE), and achieved 35 wins, including for WHIPLASH, SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN, INDOCHINE, BELLE EPOQUE, BURNT BY THE SUN, ANNE FRANK REMEMBERED, POLLOCK, ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER and ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER.
Over the next few years, Barker, Bernard and Bloom received an Industry Lifetime Achievement Award from the Independent Feature Project, a special award handed to them by Francis Ford Coppola from the Directors Guild of America, and soon afterwards each of the trio was decorated with a Chevalier des Arts and Lettres by the French Government in recognition of the dozens of French-language films they had promoted and released during the course of their association at Orion Classics and Sony Pictures Classics.
In the fall of 1996, Marcie suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage, leaving her partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair but amazingly enough, cognitively intact. She stays in close contact with SPC; she cheers their successes, mourns their losses, and has shared the benefit of her many international relationships with her successor at SPC, EVP Dylan Leiner, whom Marcie had hired as her own assistant. In the fall of 2004, Marcie was selected to receive the first “Industry Toast” at the Hamptons International Film Festival, where she was joined by friends, family and colleagues to celebrate her unique contribution to the international film community over the previous twenty years. The Bloom Fellowship builds on Marcie’s legacy while also developing new bridges and contributing to a thriving new film community.