Sundance: Producer Geralyn Dreyfous: ‘Come out and tell your stories’

For some documentary filmmakers, executive producer Geralyn White Dreyfous is more than a one-name force of nature. Instead, she's a verb.

As is, when you're tackling a problem, Geralyn it. "You punt. You say: 'I can't handle this. Can you come up with a house for me to shoot in tomorrow?' She calls you back, and she has four," says producer Amy Ziering of the new documentary "The Hunting Ground" and 2012's "The Invisible War." "She pitches in and helps. There's nothing she won't do, nothing she doesn't believe can't get done."

That Utah-generated force is in evidence at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival starting Thursday, the world's best showcase for documentaries, where 10 of Dreyfous' films made the cut, an extraordinary number for any producer. Despite her record, Dreyfous says she doesn't have an inside track on the selection process. Equally compelling, she says, are three other of her films that weren't selected for this year's festival.

Dreyfous' slate of films address a variety of topics, yet are united by one thing — her mission-driven approach to filmmaking. Prominent on this year's Sundance list are four very different documentaries ("The Hunting Ground," "Prophet's Prey," "Dreamcatcher" and "Hot Girls Wanted") that explore sexual trauma and recovery. A fifth film, "The Mask You Live In," builds upon the feminist media criticism of Jennifer Siebel Newsom's 2012 documentary "Miss Representation" to challenge the hyper-masculine messages that define contemporary boyhood.

Dreyfous' championing of women-centric stories seems especially pressing in a movie season where social commentators are calling out Hollywood for the apparent sexism in this year's Academy Award nominations.

And it also points to how Dreyfous, through the Utah Film Center, continues to raise the profile of Utah filmmakers, while deepening and broadening the local audience for independent documentary films. "I think Geralyn has been a patron saint to filmmakers everywhere, but particularly in Utah, and particularly those telling Utah-oriented stories," says her business partner, Dan Cogan, executive director and co-founder of Impact Partners.

Come out and tell your stories • Two years ago, during the filming of "The Hunting Ground," a documentary about rape on American campuses, Dreyfous was driving her daughter to her first semester of college at the University of Oregon. On the drive, she received a text from the school, announcing that a sexual assault had just been reported on the Eugene campus.

Dreyfous and the filmmakers, Ziering and director Kirby Dick, hope the film has the same explosive impact as "The Invisible War," which prompted Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-New York) to introduce the Military Justice Improvement Act, setting up an independent judiciary to investigate military sexual assault cases. The landmark bill, introduced in November 2013, came within five votes from passing, and Gillibrand has been invited to a Sundance screening of "The Hunting Ground."

Dreyfous' personal stake as a mother is just one thread of her support for films exploring sexual trauma and recovery. In addition, as she revealed at a recent event sponsored by The Tribune and the Utah Film Center, she was sexually molested when she was 13 by the grandfather of a child she babysat for.

"There's something going on here culturally that we're not addressing," Dreyfous says. "The more women talk about sexual assault, the more shame will be lifted, the more young girls will have to believe us when we say, 'That never should have happened.' "

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Tapping into the cultural zeitgeist • To a person, colleagues describe Dreyfous as a "force."

One key element of Dreyfous' success is her uncanny ability to tap into the cultural zeitgeist. "She's championing really provocative and important conversations that need to be had in our society," says Kasandra VerBrugghen, executive director at Salt Lake City's Spy Hop, the youth filmmaking nonprofit for which Dreyfous serves on the board.

Adds Vicki Varela, managing director of Utah's Office of Tourism, Film and Global Branding: "When Geralyn walks into the room, everything changes. It's the audacity of her personality and opinion."

Another element of her successful track record can be attributed to her strategic efforts to develop a new funding model through the investment-focused Impact Partners for documentaries and the new Gamechanger Films, financing female feature directors.

Underscoring Dreyfous' force is her Academy Award-level skills at networking. "Geralyn is the best connector of people I have ever met," Cogan says.

'She's going to ask me for money' • A couple of months ago, filmmaker Jill Bauer was taking a break from intense task of editing "Hot Girls Wanted," her documentary about the amateur porn industry. While on a run through Central Park, Bauer got a text from an 801 number she didn't immediately recognize.

Hey, are you in New York? the text asked, because actor Demi Moore and other activists who might be interested in the film were gathered at a cocktail party.

Bauer quickly figured out that the text was from Dreyfous, the only person she knew with a Utah phone number. After a years-long email courtship, Dreyfous had signed on to produce Bauer and Ronna Gradus' film, but Bauer had only met her in person once or twice.

Within an hour, the filmmaker was at a socialite's swanky Central Park West apartment. "She introduced me in a very appropriate way, in way that would be compelling," Bauer says. "Geralyn creates some gravitas and some importance to her introductions, and it's remarkable because she does so many."

After "The Invisible War" was released at Sundance in 2012, Ziering recalls a meeting with Dreyfous and another powerful executive producer, Regina K. Scully, while they were trying to figure out how to transport a handful of military rape survivors to a retreat. Dreyfous turned to Scully and said, "Between all the people we know with private airplanes, we'll get them there."

"That was very Geralyn: She would figure it out," Ziering says. "To her, that's just something you do — ask friends for their planes for things like this."

As Dreyfous jokes: "A lot of people see me and say, 'Oh my God. She's going to ask me for money,' which is true. I do that a lot."

That promise to Mother Teresa • Dreyfous, 52, describes the Boston home where she grew up as a place where social justice was a family value. Both parents were schoolteachers, and her father, who played quarterback in the 1950s at Notre Dame, coached football. Two of her three brothers are now college football coaches, in Iowa and Florida. After receiving a sociology degree from Harvard, she taught narrative and writing classes there with the psychiatrist and writer Robert Coles. That was when she "was bitten by storytelling," she says, adding that she considered reading students' essays like reading love letters. Even now, she says, she'll read any film pitch a friend passes along to her.

She learned about fundraising while working at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and Boston's Philanthropic Initiative, before moving to Utah 20 years ago when she married. From the start, she fell in love with the place. "This community is so full of surprises, so full of intention and depth, and a great place to raise kids," says the mother of two.

In August 2002, Dreyfous founded, on a $150,000 annual budget, what has become the Utah Film Center. Over the years, the center's budget has blossomed to $1.3 million; in addition, the center hosts a $1.9 million fiscal sponsorship program, which allows filmmakers to use its nonprofit status for fundraising. Last year, the center screened 300 films, reaching some 38,000 viewers.

Dreyfous came to prominence as a producer with two documentaries about the sex trade in India, 2003's "The Day My God Died" and then "Born into Brothels," which won an Academy Award in 2005. ("When I wasn't crying, I was throwing up," she says about the dark subject matter.) "Brothels" inspired Mother Teresa to ask filmmakers to provide for the children in the film. That promise prompted the launch of a nonprofit, which after 10 long years of fundraising, is building Hope House, a school for daughters of Calcutta prostitutes.

Just imagine the weight of that promise, is how she tells it. "I'm a Catholic from Boston, and I still haven't delivered on a promise to Mother Teresa."

ellenf@sltrib.com

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