Anywhere Road's Robert Ogden Barnum on going somewhere fast

By Susan Gerhard

Guiding four future pop stars from Brazil onto the big screen this week in “Antonia,” Robert Ogden Barnum’s new Bay Area-based distribution company, Anywhere Road, certainly comes out swinging. Tata Amaral’s impressive film, a story with heart and grit as well as style to burn, has the imprimatur of “City of God’s” Fernando Mereilles, who produced, and should find further popularity with a broader, home theater-friendly audience. Follow that with Brad Gann’s South Boston coming-of-age story, “Black Irish,” in a few short weeks, and it looks like Anywhere Road is going places, quickly. SF360.org spoke with Barnum a week before “Antonia’s” opening, shortly after the Barnum’s whirlwind spin through the Toronto International Film Festival, about the how a small, independent film distributor finds a place in the increasingly ephemeral theatrical market.

SF360: ‘Antonia’ opens this week in New York and Los Angeles. What are the marketing plans for it?

Rob Barnum: One of our partnerships is with Dan Deevy and his site, TheCinemaSource; he’s become our head of marketing. We’re doing a lot of guerilla street-teaming in both cities. We’re having two word of mouth screenings in New York, with sponsors. We have three listening parties, because soundtrack/music is the key piece of ‘Antonia.’ Newark has the largest Portuguese population in the country, so we’re doing these listening parties — one there, one in the Village near the Quad, and another one up near the Coliseum, approaching Spanish Harlem. We’re serving free drinks and playing the soundtrack and pulling people in. Our ad budgets are not

topics: bay area, distributors, q&a

10.01.2007