Jeff Lipsky Launches Glass Half Full Distribution Consulting Firm – Toronto

EXCLUSIVE: Veteran indie executive Jeff Lipsky is launching his latest venture, Glass Half Full Media. The distribution consulting firm will provide services for U.S. and international producers, filmmakers and sales agents. Based in New York, Glass Half Full has recruited former Film Society of Lincoln Center Film buyer Matt Kaszanek. The company makes its debut at the Toronto Film Festival.

Lipsky began his distribution career working alongside John Cassavetes on A Woman Under The Influence and later co-founded October Films before segueing to a dual career as a filmmaker with the 2006 Sundance selection Flannel Pajamas and co-founding Adopt Films with Tim Grady in 2011.

Lipsky says, “All I hear is doom and gloom. The negativity that ricochets throughout the independent sector is deafening. I wake up each morning and drink a tall glass of optimism. Price Waterhouse is forecasting that filmed entertainment revenues in the U.S. will set a new all-time record high in 2017. That’s all I need to know. I want to share in those revenues and I want our clients to do the same.”

Services Glass Half Full will provide include sourcing films for new and established content providers at major film festivals, worldwide; creating detailed marketing campaigns based on scripts, rough cuts and finished films; developing theatrical campaigns, incorporating all facets of marketing, distribution, and publicity; as well as insight into exhibition and distribution.

It will also rep foreign sales agents and producers as marketing consultants or service deal distributor and foster relationships with publicists, social media experts and ad agencies.

Lipsky has a long history working with foreign films, having acquired in recent years such prestige titles as Hany Abu Assad’s Oscar nominated Omar, Yuval Adler’s Bethlehem, Christian Petzold’s Barbara, the Taviani brothers’ Caesar Must Die and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Palme d’Or winner Winter Sleep. Glass Half Full will expand into that arena in short order. “I’d like to be able to team up with those films in such a way that would breathe new life into the foreign film distribution arena in the U.S. and reinvigorate the way they are marketed and distributed.”

He adds that Glass Half Full is joining “a handful of strong industry veterans vying for the attention of some wonderful independent films that find themselves orphans. The addition of Matt with his exhibition experience instantly gives us a depth few of our competitors can match.”

Kaszanek also previously did stints at the AFI Fest, the New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films. As a theatrical and non-theatrical distributor, his experience runs from Indomina Media to Facets MultiMedia.