Allison Anders

Growing up in rural Kentucky, Anders would always remember hanging onto her father’s leg at age five as he abandoned her family. Venturing back to Kentucky from Los Angeles at 17, she would soon move to London. She enrolled in junior college and later the UCLA film school. Enchanted with Wim Wenders’ films, she so deluged the filmmaker with correspondence that he gave her a job as a production assistant on his PARIS, TEXAS (1984). After graduating from UCLA, Anders made her feature writing and directing debut, BORDER RADIO (1987), a study of the LA punk scene, in collaboration with two former classmates. Her first solo effort, GAS FOOD LODGING (1992), telling of a single mother and her two teenage daughters, and her followup, MI VIDA LOCA (1994)/MY CRAZY LIFE, looking at girl gangs in the Echo Park neighborhood of LA where Anders settled, have shown her to be a deeply personal filmmaker who has used her own experience to make grittily realistic, well-observed, gently ambling studies of women coming of age amid tough, sterile social conditions.