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Deep Sleep

A teenaged girl, tormented by nightmares of witnessing her father’s murder, returns to the family home in hopes of remembering what really happened.   She finds an ally in a young Filipino-Canadian whose mother seems to have a key to the mystery, while her father’s best friend,  an American naval officer, hides another ugly secret.  

 Feature film, 35mm.  Writer, Director. Starring Megan Follows, Damon D'Oliveira and Stuart Margolin. Produced by John Eckert and Michael Lebowitz. Distributed by Festival Films. Premiered at USA Film Festival, Dallas 1990; Women in Film International Festival, Los Angeles; Centre Pompidou.  Canadian theatrical distribution; international television broadcast. 

"It took time, but the world has caught up to Patricia Gruben. The feminist filmmaker whose work has launched a raft of graduate papers is now playing to boffo box office....That Gruben can make so challenging and provocative a feature film, and make it popular, makes a shift in English Canadian cinema. Suddenly, we're no longer suspicious of art films." 

                                          --  Cameron Bailey, Now Magazine.   

Texan-Canadian Patricia Gruben got her start as a noted experimental filmmaker in the 70's and 80's, which sheds some light on the particular hysteria she's sculpting here and why it's so good: Deep Sleep is her first and only production for television and she goes all the way into the idiom, all the twists and convergences and archetypes, even casting Megan Follows as the troubled lead. Putting Canadian family TV icon Anne of Green Gables at the heart of this deeply screwed up home is a great bit of meta-storytelling (not to mention that Follows maintains a likeability to pull you through it all).  The whole manages to be as involving as it is scathing, and if it's a little surprising that it managed to make it to broadcast at all, it's equally shocking that it seems to have been so completely forgotten since.

                                       -- Rock Hyrax, Letterboxd

Watch Deep Sleep: https://archive.org/details/DeepSleepMeganFollows1990Divx

Sample scene: vimeo.com/271773235   No Password

Reviews and notices:

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  • Bailey, Cameron. "Gruben makes sophistication a new Canadian phenomenon." Now Magazine 12 October 1990.  

  • Hyrax, Rock. Deep Sleep https://letterboxd.com/film/deep-sleep-1990/

  • "SFU Film director hopes for 'sleeper' hit," Simon Fraser Summer May 24, 1990 p. 2.

  • Schwartzberg, Shlomo, "Megan Follows: Coming out of a Deep Sleep." Metropolis 1990.

  • Sumner, Jane, "Ex-Texan finds Canada a haven for independent filmmakers" Dallas Morning News April 20, 1990 p. 10C

  • "USA Film Festival features work of director born in Richardson," Richardson News April 19, 1990

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