(Watch the video interview on Youtube here)
Sundance Film Festival alum Brian Jun is preparing to bring his 5th feature back to the St. Louis metro area to film. The Indiegogo campaign for his film In The Buck hopes to exceed its projected $30,000 goal for a planned 2014 shoot. His newest film is a provocative story about sex, love, fertility and how the expectations of gender roles have shaped modern relationships. After personally backing projects on this platform for a couple years, Jun decided to bring his current project to Kickstarter to take advantage of the “freedom and financial resources it offered to make a truly original piece of work.”
Perks for this film give the general public a chance to be an insider throughout the entire filmmaking process: networking with the cast and filmmakers through set visits and one-on-one lunches/dinners, access to watch the movie (via download or Blu-ray), even invitations to the World and Midwest Premieres. Jun’s goal was to keep the perks meaningful, “Most of the higher-end perks are more personal and will allow for a true insider’s look into the filmmaking process.”
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Jun’s feature film debut, Steel City, was accepted to the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and nominated for their Grand Jury Prize. It picked up both domestic and international distribution and an Independent Spirit Award best supporting actor nomination for Raymond J. Barry (Justified, Training Day). Since then, he has written and directed three additional feature films including The Coverup, which was acquired for broadcast by Lifetime Movie Network, Joint Body (available to stream on Netflix) and most recently She Loves Me Not.
Jun prides himself on the strong ensemble casts he centers around his stories, such as Cary Elwes, Joey Lauren Adams, Alicia Witt, Mark Pellegrino, Gabriel Mann, Eliza Dushku, America Ferrera, and John Heard to name a few. Barry is also on board again for In The Buck.
Before his Sundance experience, Jun was invited into the talent program at Fox Searchlab after a screening of his student film For Jimmy Brown at the LA Short Film Fest in 2001. In addition to his Grand Jury Prize nomination at the 2006 Sundance Film Fest, he has gone on to win the Sundance Channel Emerging Director Award at the 2006 St. Louis International Film Festival and picked up nominations for the Gold Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival in both 2006 (Steel City) and 2011 (Joint Body). Owen Glieberman of Entertainment Weekly is quoted as saying, “If Jun keeps weaving together characters this compelling, he could be a major film artist in the making.”