Alan Klingenstein is a corporate and securities attorney, an investment banker, a film distributor, and an award-winning film producer. His feature film Two Family House won the Audience Award at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

. Another feature film, Runaway, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival

Tribeca Film Festival

The Tribeca Film Festival is a film festival founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff in a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the consequent loss of vitality in the TriBeCa neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.The mission of the festival...

, the Toronto Film Festival, and won Best Dramatic Feature at the 2005 Austin Film Festival

Austin Film Festival

The Austin Film Festival was started in 1994 in Austin, Texas and is claimed to be "the first organization of its kind to focus on the writer’s unique creative contribution to the film and television industries"...

. His documentary Trumbo won the 100th anniversary National Board of Review award.

Early life

Klingenstein was born and raised in Scarsdale

Scarsdale

Scarsdale could be*Scarsdale, New York, a village and town in Westchester County, New York, United States, for which The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet is named...

, New York. His father is Lee P. Klingenstein, the noted philanthropist and partner in the New York investment management firm of Neuberger & Berman. The family placed a high value on education, and Klingenstein graduated from the Taft School, then earned a bachelor's at Princeton

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

, and then received a law degree and an MBA from Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

.

Legal and banking career

Klingenstein was a corporate and securities attorney with the firm of McCutcheon, Doyle, Brown & Enerson, then traveled through Asia as General Counsel and VP for Shakey's International. For another six years, as a VP of Bankers Trust

Bankers Trust

Bankers Trust was an historic American banking organization. The bank merged with Alex. Brown & Sons before being acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1998.-History:A consortium of banks created Bankers Trust to perform trust company services for their clients....

 Securities in London, he purchased several hundred million dollars of distressed commercial mortgages, and structured billions of dollars of domestic and international transactions on behalf of the bank's corporate, institutional, and developer clients. One of these deals, valued at $1.8 billion, was the largest structured real estate financing ever completed in Europe.

Film production and distribution

In 1996, after twelve years in the corporate world, Klingenstein produced his first film: the documentary The Church of Saint Coltrane with friend and former NBC DATELINE producer Jeff Swimmer. The film won awards at seven film festivals, aired on BRAVO in the fall of 1998, then sold successfully to several cable outlets in Europe and Asia. Shortly after, Klingenstein formed Filbert Steps Productions, together with media investor and production partner Jim Kohlberg.

Klingenstein produced all four of Filberts Steps' films for very low budgets. Every film premiered at world-class film festivals, then sold to global entertainment outlets.

Two Family House won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

 in 2000, garnered two Independent Spirit Award nominations, was released theatrically by Lions Gate Films, and was cited on a number of year-end best film lists for 2000 (National Board of Review, Premiere Magazine, The Baltimore Sun

The Baltimore Sun

The Baltimore Sun is the U.S. state of Maryland’s largest general circulation daily newspaper and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries....

and influential website Ain't It Cool News.com).

Forever Fabulous, starring Jean Smart

Jean Smart

Jean E. Smart is an American film, television, and stage actress. She is known for her comedic roles, one of the best known being her role as Charlene Frazier Stillfield on the CBS sitcom Designing Women. She later gained critical acclaim for dramatic work, with her portrayal of Martha Logan on 24...

 and Robert Wagner

Robert Wagner

Robert John Wagner is an American actor of stage, screen, and television.A veteran of many films in the 1950s and 1960s, Wagner gained prominence in three American television series that spanned three decades: It Takes a Thief , Switch , and Hart to Hart...

, ran for two years on the Lifetime Movie Network

Lifetime Movie Network

Lifetime Movie Network is a cable channel that is part of Lifetime Entertainment Services, LLC, a subsidiary of A&E Television Networks, LLC. A&E Television Networks is a joint venture of the Disney-ABC Television Group, Hearst Corporation and NBCUniversal. LMN offers women-oriented movies...

 and is now closing a home video deal with Netflix

Netflix

Netflix, Inc., is an American provider of on-demand internet streaming media in the United States, Canada, and Latin America and flat rate DVD-by-mail in the United States. The company was established in 1997 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California...

.

Runaway, starring Aaron Stanford

Aaron Stanford

Aaron Stanford is an American actor, best known for his role as Pyro in X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand films, and Doug Bukowski in the 2006 The Hills Have Eyes remake....

 and Robin Tunney

Robin Tunney

Robin Jessica Tunney is an American actress. She is best known for her lead roles in the movie The Craft and the television series Prison Break and The Mentalist.-Early life:...

, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival

Tribeca Film Festival

The Tribeca Film Festival is a film festival founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff in a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the consequent loss of vitality in the TriBeCa neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.The mission of the festival...

 and Toronto Film Festival in 2005, won the Best Narrative Feature award at the Austin Film Festival

Austin Film Festival

The Austin Film Festival was started in 1994 in Austin, Texas and is claimed to be "the first organization of its kind to focus on the writer’s unique creative contribution to the film and television industries"...

, and was distributed domestically by Starz and internationally by Dream Entertainment.

Trumbo premiered at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival to glowing reviews by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

, Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

, and was distributed by the Samuel Goldwyn Company.

A tribute to the iconic screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era,Trumbo attracted a spectacular cast which included Joan Allen

Joan Allen

Joan Allen is an American actress. She worked in theatre, television and film during her early career, and achieved recognition for her Broadway debut in Burn This, winning a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play in 1989.She has received three Academy Award nominations;...

, Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....

, Kirk Douglas

Kirk Douglas

Kirk Douglas is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past , Champion , Ace in the Hole , The Bad and the Beautiful , Lust for Life , Paths of Glory , Gunfight at the O.K...

, Michael Douglas

Michael Douglas

Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...

, Donald Sutherland

Donald Sutherland

Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...

, Brian Dennehy

Brian Dennehy

Brian Mannion Dennehy is an American actor of film, stage and screen.-Early years:Dennehy was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the son of Hannah and Edward Dennehy, who was a wire service editor for the Associated Press; he has two brothers, Michael and Edward. Dennehy is of Irish ancestry and was...

, Nathan Lane

Nathan Lane

Nathan Lane is an American actor of stage and screen. He is best known for his roles as Mendy in The Lisbon Traviata, Albert in The Birdcage, Max Bialystock in the musical The Producers, Ernie Smuntz in MouseHunt, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to...

, Paul Giamatti

Paul Giamatti

Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti is an American actor. Giamatti began his career as a supporting actor in several films produced during the 1990s including Private Parts, The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, The Negotiator, and Man on the Moon, before earning lead roles in several projects in the...

, David Strathairn

David Strathairn

David Russell Strathairn is an American actor. He was nominated for an Academy Award for portraying journalist Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck...

, and Josh Lucas

Josh Lucas

Josh Lucas is an American actor. He has appeared in many films, including Glory Road, A Beautiful Mind, and Poseidon.-Early life:...

.

New models of film distribution

An innovator in film distribution, Klingenstein developed Filmcatcher.com, which offered downloadable distribution deals to select filmmakers with Pyramide International and Original Thinkers, as well as a charity partnership with FilmAid International

FilmAid International

FilmAid International is a non-profit humanitarian organization that uses the power of film to address the needs of displaced people around the world. The organization was founded in 1999 to help people in Macedonia who had fled from their homes in Kosovo. With the encouragement of the United...

. The site was highly curated, containing editorial coverage of art house films, on-camera interviews with cutting-edge filmmakers and actors, film festival coverage, critical reviews, celebrity picks, and profiles of the independent film community.

In 2010, Klingenstein joined with brothers Danny and Jack Fisher to create Fisher Klingenstein Films, a film acquisition fund established to acquire and distribute a slate of both mainstream and specialized films. Fisher Klingenstein will acquire 24 to 36 completed films per year.

External links

• http://fisherbrothersmedia.com/acquisition-distribution/fisher-klingenstein-film-fund/
• http://filmcatcher.com/
• http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0459754/
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0202641/
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425414/
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0889671/
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0176234/fullcredits#cast