Sandra Schulberg
Adjunct Professor
Sandra Schulberg is one of the pioneers of international financing for independent movies. She started by selling foreign rights to a number of American feature films made in the 1970’s, including first features by Richard Pearce (THE GARDENER’S SON), Robert Young (ALAMBRISTA), and Rob Nilsson and John Hanson (NORTHERN LIGHTS). That track record enabled her to secure foreign pre-sale and co-production financing during the 1980’s for the directors of WILDROSE (John Hanson) and WAITING FOR THE MOON (Jill Godmilow), and to advise and enable numerous other filmmakers. She was line producer for Glen Pitre’s first feature, BELIZAIRE THE CAJUN. In 1989, she joined the PBS drama series “American Playhouse” to create its first international financing arm. Over the course of her seven years at Playhouse, during which she was promoted to Senior Vice President, she was instrumental in securing over $24 million of production funding for its slate of movies and television dramas. She was also responsible for engaging and monitoring the work of the company’s international sales agents. When the American Playhouse series was wound down in 1996, she formed her own production company, Schulberg Productions, and secured international financing for Ann Hu’s first feature, SHADOW MAGIC (acquired by Sony Classics at its Sundance premiere), and for Barbara Kopple’s feature-length documentary MY GENERATION. From 1998 to 2001, she served as executive producer and investment manager for a private German media fund, Hollywood Partners, and structured its financing for a slate of films that included the Oscar-nominated QUILLS, starring Geoffrey Rush and Kate Winslet, a co-production with 20th Century Fox Searchlight; the Miramax release UNDISPUTED, starring Wesley Snipes and Ving Rhames; Bill Bennett’s IN A SAVAGE LAND; as well THE LAST YELLOW, I’LL TAKE YOU THERE, and several others. All of these films involved multiple international production partners.
In 2001, Schulberg founded Phobos Entertainment and its imprint, Phobos Books, which published five anthologies and several novels of speculative fiction by emerging authors, and developed the TV movie CRIMSON FORCE for what was then called the SciFi Channel.
Beginning in 2003, Schulberg turned her attention to film preservation and restoration. She led the effort to preserve and revive the films of the Marshall Plan, which had been banned from view in the U.S. under the terms of the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act. The 25-title series she curated, “Selling Democracy: Films of the Marshall Plan, 1948-1953,” continues to tour U.S. cities, and has been showcased abroad with support from the U.S. Department of State. In 2009, she restored the 1948 film about the first Nuremberg trial, NUREMBERG: ITS LESSON FOR TODAY [The 2009 Schulberg/Waletzky Restoration].
A longtime advocate of American independent filmmakers, she was the founding director of the IFP (Independent Feature Project), now over 30 years old and the largest organization of indie filmmakers in the U.S. She also co-founded First Run Features, the specialized film distribution company. In 2010, she and a small group of visionaries launched IndieCollect, a campaign to identify and preserve all American independent films. In 1994, Schulberg received a special Spirit Award for her contribution to American independent cinema.
She holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College in Anthropology, and has begun her M.A. in Public Diplomacy at USC’s Annenberg School on Communications. Born in Paris, she is fluent in French, Spanish and German.
Syllabus (PDF): Feature Film Financing – Spring 2009