Columbia Grad Plans to Grow Flowers Into Feature

Last weekend at the New Orleans Film Festival, writer-director Ashley Charbonnet was back home to screen her Columbia University thesis short The Price of Flowers. Starring Lance Nichols and Justin Scalise, it is the story of Red, a man who sells carnations to drivers-by at a busy Crescent City intersection.

Charbonnet made three shorts while earning her M.A. in New York, and is working on a feature-length script version of Flowers. Since she is also now, post-grad, the Film Programs and Outreach Manager at non-profit production hub the New Orleans Video Access Center, she should be especially well-positioned to leverage the latest local resources for the expansion of her short.

 

The star of Flowers, short and eventually long, has a long list of theater and film credits. Nichols has appeared in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frailty, Runaway Jury and dozens of TV shows. His many theater productions include a staging of Driving Miss Daisy in Ventura, California alongside four-time Emmy winner Michael Learned.

Charbonnet debuted her film in the spring of 2010 at the Columbia University Film Festival. Since that time, it has screened a couple of times previously in her native New Orleans as well as at a handful of other film festivals in Topanga, Vancouver, Toronto and San Francisco.

[The Price of Flowers]