biography: nicole conn

Soul Kiss Films Co-Founder Nicole Conn has been a die-hard romantic and black and white film fan from the age of ten. She was raised and educated in Portland, Oregon and easily made the transition to Hollywood sunshine and California dreaming.

Her penchant for adult and dramatic story telling is evident in her latest feature films, Elena Undone and A Perfect Ending. Both films are classic romances with a twist, the former based on a chapter from her own life, and the latter based on a story idea by Marina.

The premature birth of Conn's son, Nicholas, dramatically changed both her personal and film life. little man, is a documentary she wrote, directed and produced about her own son born 100 days early and only weighing one pound. The feature documentary went on to win 12 Best Documentary Awards, along with the prestigious Cedar Sinai's Courageous Beginnings Award and Family Pride's Family Tree Award. The film made three TOP TEN FILMS OF 2005 list and Showtime picked up the feature and ran an Emmy campaign on this hard-hitting story about Conn's son's premature birth and subsequent 5-month hospital stay in a Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit.

In efforts to continue her support of other parents who find themselves thrust into the insanity of the NICU, Ms Conn collaborated with Preemie Magazine Founder Deborah Discenza in creating the The Preemie Parent's NICU Survival Guide: How to Maintain Your Sanity and Create a New Normal, published in January, 2010.

Conn's passion for film carried her through her first feature where she single-handedly raised the money, wrote, directed and produced (along with Pam Kuri) Claire of the Moon, the maverick film about a woman's journey to her sexual identity. The film garnered rave reviews and paved the way for lesbian themed cinema in 1991. Conn also created a FIRST for lesbian cinema: ancillary in the form of a novelization (in its 15th reprint and 10 Year Anniversary Republish) a making-of documentary MOMENTS (best-selling lesbian documentary ever made), soundtracks, posters, t-shirts, etc. She followed these projects with the award winning short film, Cynara…Poetry in Motion.

A two book deal with Simon Schuster produced the novels, Passion's Shadow (1995) & Angel Wings (1997), a new age love story. The script adaptation for Angel Wings won the 2001 Telluride Film Festival's Best Screenplay Award. In another pioneering effort, The Wedding Dress was chosen by AOL Time Warner for its new internet endeavor ipublish, which debuted in June 2001. She Walks in Beauty was published in September, 2001 and is currently in development as a feature film, along with several other original screenplays Conn has penned.

Conn achieved industry recognition with her film Claire of the Moon and was a finalist in the prestigious Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. She believes in giving back to the community and sponsored the Claire of the Moon Scholarship in 1998, awarding second time novelists through the ASTRAEA Foundation.

Well known for her speed, quality and prolific ability to write in many genres, Conn has written five novels, a parent's guide, two teleplays, nine screenplays, and has produced four soundtracks.

She currently resides with her life and business partner Marina Rice Bader and their family of (wonderful if precocious) six children in Los Angeles.


REVIEWS AND QUOTES

"Nicole Conn is the BEST director! She pulls out every emotion resulting in a perfect performance." – Barbara Niven

"Brilliant! Need I say more?" – Jessica Clark

"Conn makes Michael Moore look like an impartial observer." - The Weekly News (Miami), for "little man"

"Conn's film is pure joy. Few people can watch without feeling their own moral compass go haywire." - Wall Street Journal, for "little man"

"An altogether riveting portrait of motherly devotion at it's most primal." - LA Weekly, for "little man"

"As any fan of Nicole Conn's work will know, she brings as much in passion to her work as she does in skill." - DVD Outsider, for "Elena Undone"

"The core romance is fantastic and enormously compelling. There is romance, there is longing, and there is major, five-alarm drama..." - AfterEllen.com, for "Elena Undone"

"As I mentioned in my reflections on QFest, I think Nicole Conn's new film Elena Undone, was a brilliant choice to open the festival because it is one of those creations that epitomizes this sea of change in lesbian cinema, most significantly, simply by being a well-made film, from acting to editing." - Cherry Grrl, for "Elena Undone"
A Moment fromNicole Conn