[Example Press Release]

PRESS RELEASEFor Immediate Release

FINDING VIVIAN MAIERTheatrical Release Coming Soon in 2013

Chicago, IL (February 14, 2013) – A new feature-length documentary film promises to shed more light on the life and vision of the enigmatic Chicago street photographer and nanny Vivian Maier. Her body of work seemed destined for obscurity until it was discovered by 26-year-old real estate agent John Maloof, who purchased her negatives for $380 at auction, while trying to salvage historical information on his Chicago neighborhood.

As a nanny for 40 years, she worked for many families and would eventually be a nanny to Phil Donahue’s children. Intensely private and publicly confrontational, she spent her days off, walking the streets of Chicago and taking photographs of street scenes one fleeting moment at a time with her Rolleiflex camera.

The film chronicles those that knew her and the overnight rise of her star in the art world, which had curators and amateurs alike dazzled by the prolific and eminent quality of her images. She was a game-changer, capturing the quirky egalitarian energy of street life, and almost overnight reshuffling the deck of where a new photographer might fit among the leading 20th Century street photographers. She is now hailed as one of the mid-century giants in street photography along with Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and Helen Levitt.

An article in The Independent said “the well-to-do shoppers of Chicago stroll and gossip in all their department store finery before Maier, but the most arresting subjects are those people on the margins of successful, rich America in the 1950’s and 1960’s; the kids, the black maids, the bums flaked out on shop stoops.”

The children she nannied would later describe her: “a Feminist, she was like Mary Poppins, a Socialist, a second mother, and a tell-it-like-it-is type of person. She learned English by going to theaters, which she loved. She wore a men’s jacket, men’s shoes and a large hat most of the time. She was constantly taking pictures, which she didn’t show to anyone.”

Now Maloof will soon release the documentary film on his posthumous discovery of an eccentric Chicago street photographer who made her mark on the world, one fleeting moment at a time.

Finding Vivian Maier was Directed & Produced by John Maloof and Charlie Siskel (Bowling for Columbine, Religulous). For more information about the film Finding Vivian Maier, the discovery

continues online at http://www.vivianmaier.com/film-finding-vivian-maier/. To view a gallery of her work continue to http://www.vivianmaier.com.

Contact: Kristin Lambert

Phone: (312) 645-9511Email: kristinlambert@siskelfilms.com

1060 W. Addison StreetChicago, IL 60613

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