A revolutionary technology is upending lives. Youth demand social change. Small businesses struggle to survive as American corporations gobble them up. This story, set in the early 1960s is about the disruptors who navigate this changing tide.
Marjorie Garrison, a radical activist, infiltrates the 1961 National Office Machine Exhibit to protest the planned obsolescence and disrupts IBM's launch of the revolutionary Selectric typewriter. Her actions draw the attention of Charles Carnusty, a ruthless real estate developer.
Desperate to save her father's struggling Radio Row shop, Marjorie reluctantly accepts Carnusty's offer to spy on the iconic Kensington Typewriter Company. Although she justifies this slip into the corporate world as a temporary measure to help her father, she becomes intrigued by the people and potential she encounters. There’s Ida an underappreciated Black programmer in Kensington’s basement developing code that could revolutionize the world. And there’s the Korean upstart Hannah Berk who’s cornered the low-cost portable market with her vision for the future of commerce. Marjorie starts to see a future for this company, a future that promises the better world she and her activist friends are fighting for.
But then the Port Authority announces its most ambitious plan yet: The World Trade Center will be built on top of Radio Row, raising not only her father's shop but all of their neighbors too. Marjorie has a new mission.
Emily’s films span fiction, documentary and interactive realms. Her work includes SANDORKRAUT, a NEW YORK TIMES Op-doc; a chimerical puppetry short THE NEVER BELL, a feminist-futurist film THE CLOCK and her lyrical feature SONG OF THE BASQUES. She wrote and produced KARLA’S ARRIVAL - short-listed for Spain’s Goya’s- and directed NBC’s Comedy Showcase. She’s written two award-winning screenplays MIDLAND and ALL THAT FOLLOWS and two of her pilots ABUELA HIERBA and INVISIBLE ISLANDS have won development awards from multiple arts councils and foundations. She’s currently directing THE BABY DIDN’T HURT HER JUMP-SHOT and also in development with a period-drama sports series THE NARRATIVE about the unlikely friendship between Muhammad Ali and George Plimpton. Recognized by national film bodies across Europe and Latin America, Emily’s earned accolades from The Smithsonian Institute, NBC Talent, Tribeca Film, HBO, Fulbright Foundation, PBS, Sundance, Marble House, IFP, Film Independent and the Sloan Foundation. Studies in Art and Music at Amherst College sparked her interest in Film; after earning a Masters at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, she dove into camera and art crews in Europe. Emily plays cello, competed as an elite triathlete speaks Spanish, French, and Basque and volunteers as a translator for detained migrants and asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border.
ATHENA WRITER'S LAB selection 2019
Jerome Foundation Tofte-Lake residency
