SYNOPSIS
When disease nearly wipes out the human race, a telepathic teenage girl named Astraea believes her visions confirm that survivors are living in Northern Canada. She leads her doubting brother on a five thousand mile journey, through a silent America, and into the snowbound wilderness, hoping to re-build life as she knew it. As they head North, her clairvoyance intensifies and they encounter another couple homesteading on a remote lake in Maine. The grief and complexity - as well as the excitement and comfort - of communal living pits itself against Astraea’s desire to keep moving and find her family. Astraea is a post-apocalyptic film that finally shows not what humanity is running from, but what we’re running toward.
Independent Feature Screening Series provides the opportunity for independent producers, directors, writers and actors, to discuss the process of creating a feature length film while at the same time inspiring our audience to create their own work.
PANELISTS BIOS
Scotty Crowe, actor, producer
Scotty is an actor, writer, and producer. His feature film ASTRAEA has screened at a dozen film festivals and counting, winning three audience and jury awards. His previous effort, DIVING NORMAL, won Best Feature at the Beverly Hills Film Festival and is currently available on iTunes, Amazon, and other outlets. Other film and TV credits include THE SOCIAL NETWORK, SHAMELESS, NEW GIRL, TILDA (created/directed by Bill Condon), LIKE YOU MEAN IT, and MAYBE THERE’S A TREE. Before moving to Los Angeles, he was musician John Mayer’s first tour manager and author of the tour's popular online "Road Journal." Before that, he studied Mathematics and International Affairs at Georgia Tech. Before that, he lived on Jekyll Island, GA (population 800). Scotty is currently a teaching artist for Young Storytellers Foundation and also leads a high school writing and public speaking program centered on issues of culture identity and social dynamics; he also hosts MASS AND VOLUME, a podcast focused on the same subject matter.
Kristjan Thor, director, producer
Kristjan is a critically-acclaimed director of both theater and film. His first feature film, Diving Normal, premiered at the Dallas Film Festival subsequently won the audience award for Best Feature as well as the festival’s award for Best Actress at the Beverly Hills Film Festival. His second feature, ASTRAEA won the New Visions Award at Cinequest in San Jose, Audience Award at MIFF, Best Picture and Best Director at Sydney's Fantastic Planet Festival. He is currently in pre-production for a feature that will be shot in Iceland, where Kristjan is from. Some highlights of Kristjan’s theater work in NYC include: the US premier of Lukas Barfuss’ The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents, with Grace Gummer and the world premieres of Artifacts of Consequence, Balaton, Lathem Prince, and The Laws of Motion, all by Ashlin Halfnight. He also directed Bathsheba Doran’s adaptation of Maeterlinck’s The Blind, which transferred to the Classic Stage Company. Kristjan’s work has been seen worked at PS 122, The Wild Project, CSC, the Sanford Meisner (with Vortex productions) and the Frying Pan, as well as many other venues across NYC. Last spring, Thor directed The Penalty, by Clay McCloud Chapman at Dixon Place and recently revived it at the Public Theater. Since 2009, Thor has been the Co-Creator and Founder of the immersive horror experience, BLACKOUT Haunted House, which currently has productions running in NYC, LA, Chicago, and Miami. More recently Kristjan, along with Blackout co-creator Josh Randall, has been collaborating with Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions to help create their live events, based on The Purge film series. These shows include Purge: Fear the Nightand Purge: Breakout. A documentary about BLACKOUT called, The Blackout Experiments premiered at Sundance 2016. Thor graduated as a Senior Fellow from Dartmouth College and holds an MFA in Directing from Columbia's School of the Arts and is presently teaching at NYU's Stonestreet Studio.
