WINGSPAN MEDIA PARTNERS presents
A film by Ellie Dylan and Sky Dylan-Robbins 82 Minutes | U.S.A. | English | Color
Official Selections / Awards Sedona International Film Festival (Audience Choice & Independent Spirit Awards, Best Documentary) Heartland International Film Festival Maui Film Festival Spirit International Film Festival, Tel Aviv Santa Monica International Film Festival Malibu International Film Festival Buffalo International Film Festival Manhattan Film Festival (Film Heals Award, Best Documentary) Anchorage International Film Festival (Jury Award, Best Documentary) Vancouver International Film Festival NewFilmmakers New York Vail Film Festival Los Angeles Women’s International Film Festival Kansas City FilmFest International Rhode Island International Film Festival (Semi-Finalist, Documentary) Hot Springs International Women’s Film Festival
Press Contact NY / Nat’l: Wingspan Media Partners (212) 385-9500 [email protected] www.onourownisland.com SYNOPSES
Logline
A timeless true love story that chronicles the seasons of a relationship from its romantic beginnings through life’s final moments.
Short Synopsis
ON OUR OWN ISLAND is a timeless true love story that chronicles the seasons of a relationship from its romantic beginnings through life’s final moments. With this remarkable documentary, award-winning mother-daughter filmmakers Ellie Dylan and Sky Dylan-Robbins present a tender and intimate look at the enduring power of true love and the gifts revealed in what matters most. Like a fairytale only fiction can fathom, this inspiring nonfiction love story enters the world at just the right time. While the pandemic places the impermanence of life smack in our collective faces, ON OUR OWN ISLAND awakens and heals with its heartwarming tale about love, life, and the profound dance to the end.
Long Synopsis
Fifty years after the release of the iconic movie “Love Story” comes ON OUR OWN ISLAND, an intimate and uplifting documentary that chronicles a real-life romance from its fateful beginnings through its unexpected, untimely end. With a storyline that seems right out of a narrative feature, ON OUR OWN ISLAND navigates the seasons of a relationship to reveal the hidden secrets, struggles, and gifts to be found in true love and in life’s final moments.
The story begins on a completely deserted Zuma Beach in Malibu, California. Ellie lies on a towel, her bare feet swirling the sand as she pages through a book. She had come to the beach in search of solitude and answers she’d hoped to find at the water’s edge. It’s a perfect summer day. The waves kiss the shore as a flock of seagulls look on. Then, as she glances up towards the ocean, he appears: a tall, handsome young man, slowly and splendidly rising out of the water. Time stands still as their eyes meet and Steven strides towards her. He smiles, and she, book still in hand, puts it down and smiles back.
So began Ellie and Steven’s romance, like a fairytale that only fiction can fathom. Over the years, Steven wrote hundreds of love letters to Ellie, chronicling their life together – a life he
2 always described as taking place on their own island. Indeed, that first fateful day on the beach lived in their hearts for decades; their love was true, endless, and singular – a love they thought would last forever.
But what happens when a love story comes to a close, and how is it possible to navigate that end together?
ON OUR OWN ISLAND is a deeply intimate, honest, and uplifting nonfiction love story — a story for our times. While the pandemic places the impermanence of life smack in our collective faces and cities experience a mass exodus to the hills, ON OUR OWN ISLAND takes viewers inside the journey as one family does just that. Called “a balm for our times,” ON OUR OWN ISLAND inspires and heals with its heartwarming tale about love, life, and the profound dance to the end.
Warning: While the film is a powerful love story, please note that one of the lead characters has a peaceful, natural death on camera, gracefully shown.
3 ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
The production of ON OUR OWN ISLAND was serendipitous from beginning to end. Its co-directors, award-winning mother-daughter journalists Ellie Dylan and Sky Dylan-Robbins, were from the onset swept up in the serendipity of how this film came to be. By the time production began on ON OUR OWN ISLAND, Ellie already had decades of experience in the media and Sky had become an accomplished journalist as well.
When a terminal diagnosis for Steven Robbins (their husband and father, respectively) upended their lives, the family decided to film its journey, never imagining that events would unfold as they did. Ellie and Sky had the journalistic skills but gave each other the strength; the camera became invisible as they supported each other and Steven through this unforgettable experience.
Ellie and Steven shared the kind of love that’s sought after, pined for, poetically written about, and yet rarely found. What began as a chance encounter on a deserted beach in Malibu turned into a decades-long romance in New York that mirrors Hollywood’s greatest love stories — with a final act that tenderly and intimately sheds light on life’s most feared and universal passage.
It’s this fairytale-like love story that’s at the heart of ON OUR OWN ISLAND, a strikingly poignant first feature documentary from veteran journalists Ellie Dylan and Sky Dylan-Robbins. It’s a film about love and death — the death of a poetic soul, of a storybook romance, and of a family that will never again be as it was before... and about the love that endured throughout it all. It’s a film that is coincidentally entering the world at a time when death is on everyone’s minds and what matters most is in everyone’s hearts. It’s a film for everyone: everyone who’s lost someone or will lose someone they’ve loved and will themselves die one day.
Actors Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw turned a journey such as this into an unforgettable experience for an entire generation in the epic 1970’s romance “Love Story.” It was a classic Hollywood tale with a heart-wrenching ending that seemed the stuff that only fiction can fathom. Yet on the fiftieth anniversary of this memorable movie, ON OUR OWN ISLAND appears with a similar real-life romance that seems written just for the big screen.
When their thirty-three year idyllic marriage was turned upside down by Steven’s terminal diagnosis, the family began searching for ways to heal him, thinking all the while that he would somehow beat the odds and overcome his dire prognosis. When it became obvious that Steven’s death was looming, the family’s focus shifted to finding ways to make his end-of-life experience peaceful and consistent with the values they held dear. Astonished when their search came up empty, and with Steven’s encouragement, the family decided to film its journey so that others could benefit from the answers they were so desperately determined to find.
4 While Ellie and Steven had spent most of their marriage in New York City, four years prior to Steven’s diagnosis, they decided to completely change their life from urban to rural and move to a farm in upstate New York. Although their only child, Sky, continued living in the city, she joined the family at the farm as Steven’s illness took a turn for the worse. As his days became numbered and his time on earth grew shorter, Steven began to say that there was no more perfect place to have cancer than in the exquisite, serene backdrops that nature provided on their farm. Indeed, the seasons around them perfectly mirrored the seasons unfolding in Steven’s life, in his marriage to Ellie, and in the family he so dearly loved.
It was the transformational beauty of nature’s seasons that influenced not only the production style of the film but also its genesis. In the fall of 2014, as the brightly colored leaves of autumn started their voyage to the ground, Sky grabbed her camera and Ellie her clipboard. Together, they began documenting the family’s — and Steven’s — journey as the end of his life and the end of the family’s life, as they knew it, were coming to a close.
Thirty seven years apart in age, and from two very different generations, these award-winning mother-daughter journalists soon found themselves in uncharted waters, both as filmmakers and as family members. Faced with watching someone they love deteriorate before their eyes and with life’s most feared yet inevitable passage looming on the horizon, Ellie and Sky decided to avoid bringing in any outside camera crews so that the intimacy of the family’s remaining time together could be preserved.
“The shooting style of the film was really determined by the mobility of my dad who had always been a strong and athletic guy. In the beginning, when he was still very much himself in the spring and summer, we were able to capture the vibrant life we shared together on the farm using a variety of gear and shooting styles.” said Sky Dylan-Robbins, co-director of ON OUR OWN ISLAND.
“But as Steven began to decline and his death became imminent, nothing was more important to us than to be totally present for him at every moment. During the last part of his life in the dead of winter, each day was more powerful and all-consuming than anything we’d ever experienced. We didn’t know how we could possibly even survive this time — much less film it — so our camera became a silent observer of his final days in a lone corner of the room, where it quietly sat on a tripod,” added Ellie Dylan, co-director of ON OUR OWN ISLAND (and Sky’s mom).
“As time progressed and the intensity of the experience increased, we were concerned that my mom and I wouldn't be able to keep it together, much less maintain any kind of journalistic perspective in filming such a personal and pivotal experience. We soon realized that there was
5 really only one way for us to get through it, and that was to just totally be present for my dad and for each other,” said Sky.
“In completely surrendering,” added Ellie, “we began to see that things seemed to just serendipitously appear and guide our way through this otherwise very dark time. We soon came to realize that even in these moments of extreme vulnerability, there were amazing gifts that unfolded on our journey. We’re grateful that we were able to capture and share it, especially now, in a time when almost everyone has lost someone they love.”
The filmmakers made a conscious choice to use true love as the narrative arc through which to tell their story so it could be relatable and accessible to a wide audience. Even though viewers have historically embraced epic love stories that end with a death both in literature and in film — as well as in graphically violent works of fiction — the portrayal of death in real life has long been kept under wraps because of the widespread societal fear involved with facing this inevitable passage.
Today, the tides are turning. ON OUR OWN ISLAND brings to life a growing movement that’s creating seismic change throughout the country, and the world — a movement in which people are increasingly looking to transform their end-of-life experience and return it into the hands of family members — and reclaim the power that is theirs to hold. The filmmakers believe that it is no accident that ON OUR OWN ISLAND is entering the world at this time in history, just as the pandemic is bringing loss to the forefront in a transformational moment shared by all.
In this same way, the serendipity that was at the film’s genesis continued throughout its production, with countless examples too numerous to mention here. A significant one bears note: right before his death, Steven wrote a final love letter to Ellie, which he secretly recorded as an audio file and revealed to Sky only a short time before he died. The filmmakers were incredulous at the poetic nature of this last expression of his love for Ellie and realized that it must be included in the film.
In 2020, as the film was in its finishing stages and after six years in production, several bins of love letters from Steven to Ellie were found in the attic of the family home. Steven had written these romantic letters to Ellie over the decades and, somehow, they’d been forgotten as his life was so tragically cut short.
The name for the film had been evolving over its years in production. With the discovery of these letters, it soon became obvious that there was only one name the film should have. Just as in his last letter to Ellie, the many others in the bins also referred to the only way Steven ever described their time together. Whenever he wrote about it, he used just one phrase; he’d say their love and their life took place “on our own island,” poetically reflecting their fairytale romance
6 and the beach theme of their first encounter. And just like in so many of history’s greatest romances, this became a metaphor they shared for how deeply they loved each other — singularly, infinitely, and unfettered by the influences of the world, even through death.
7 ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
Ellie Dylan (Producer, Co-director) Ellie’s award-winning career in the media spans numerous sectors of the industry. After beginning as a college disc jockey, she quickly became the most-listened-to female radio host in American history on NBC. She then went on to become the host and producer of a number-one-rated, Emmy Award-winning weekly television series on ABC. She later developed and spearheaded a public/private partnership with the U.S. government, SKY U, where more than seven million of children in over 10,000 schools across America were introduced to important leadership principles through her initiative. Prior to all of this, Dylan wrote her senior thesis in college on death. Throughout her years in the media, she always believed that the skills she was learning were really just a “toolbox of knowledge” she would later use for a larger purpose — a belief confirmed, decades after, when Dylan was tasked with bringing this powerful story to life.
Sky Dylan-Robbins (Co-director, Cinematographer) Sky is a New York-based journalist and the founder and executive director of The Video Consortium, a global network of today's leading nonfiction filmmakers. Previously, she was a journalist at NBC News, where she worked across broadcast, streaming, and digital verticals. Before NBC, she was The New Yorker's inaugural Senior Producer, where she created the magazine’s first short films and video series. Sky has been recognized by Forbes magazine as a "30 under 30" in the media. When filming for ON OUR OWN ISLAND began, Sky was producing a film about birth for The New Yorker magazine. The juxtaposition of finding out that her father had a terminal disease while filming the beauty of life’s beginning was a devastating irony. Supporting her father on his final journey — and documenting it, as he’d wished — has been the most fulfilling story of her life thus far.
8 CREDITS
produced and directed by ELLIE DYLAN and SKY DYLAN ROBBINS
executive produced by ELLIE DYLAN
cinematographer SKY DYLAN-ROBBINS
editors MICHAEL LEVINE ELLIE DYLAN SKY DYLAN-ROBBINS
original music by DOMINIQUE CHARPENTIER
music supervisor JOSEPH MILLER
additional cinematography ANDREW DAVID WATSON
drone cinematography ALEXANDER HOTZ
assistant editor MICHAEL CRAFT
graphics and title design CASEY DROGIN
animation MAQUI GAONA
sound design JESSE PETERSON
color CHAD SMITH
9 transcriber TAMARA DOWNS
legal services MELISSA GEORGES, ESQ. FRANKFURT KURNIT KLEIN & SELZ
Archival Footage
NBC NEWS ARCHIVES ABCNEWS VIDEOSOURCE WMAQ NBC5 CHICAGO
Book Excerpt “ON LIFE AFTER DEATH” BY ELISABETH KÜBLER-ROSS Copyright © 1991 by The Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Family Limited Partnership. Used by arrangement with The Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Family LP and The Barbara Hogenson Agency. All rights reserved.
Additional Footage Captamotion/Vetta/Getty Images Brusonja/Creatas Video/Getty Images John Downer Productions/Image Bank Film/Getty Images Romanets/Shutterstock.com
Artwork “HEALING ANGEL,” EDWARD BEKKERMAN
Greeting Cards LC MCDONALD, LITTLESHOPOFELLESEE KATHLEEN CASEY, GREAT ARROW JULIE RICHARDSON, UNBLUSHING
SPECIAL THANKS
ROSE TOUSANT REV. DOSUNG YOO REV. SUNG IN NA MITCHELL GAYNOR, MD. ANN-ELIZABETH BARNES MARIO GRIMALDI SANDRA JARDINE KEN BULLINGER
10 RICARDO ANDUJAR NICHOLAS WEISSMAN TODD WISEMAN JR. DANIEL JOHNSON PARKER POSEY LANDON VAN SOEST FRED L. SEEMAN MICHAEL PIZZA VICKI’S VEGGIES THE NOMAD HOTEL, NYC WON DHARMA CENTER COMMUNITY HOSPICE OF COLUMBIA GREENE
SONGS
“PAPILLON” Composed by Dominique Charpentier Performed by Dominique Charpentier
"CHAIN OF FOOLS" Written by Don Covay Published by Cotillion Music Inc. (BMI) On behalf of Pronto Music, Springtime Music Inc, and Fourteenth Hour Music, Inc Performed by Aretha Franklin Courtesy of Atlantic Recording Corp. By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing
"BE" Written and Performed by Sam Lardner
“SONG SPARROW SERENADE (instrumental)” Written by Podington Bear Performed by Podington Bear
“HAPPY MOMENTS” Composed by Dominique Charpentier Performed by Dominique Charpentier
“LA QUESTION” Composed by Dominique Charpentier Performed by Dominique Charpentier
11 “CHRYSALIDE” Composed by Dominique Charpentier Performed by Dominique Charpentier
“LETTRE À ELLIE” Composed by Dominique Charpentier Performed by Dominique Charpentier
“PRELUDE NO. 23” Written and Produced by Chris Zabriskie Performed by Chris Zabriskie
“MISTRAL” Composed by Dominique Charpentier Performed by Dominique Charpentier
"GRANDE, GRANDE, GRANDE" Written by Tony Renis, Alberto Testa, and Catalina Friedman Performed by Mina Courtesy of Warner Music Italia By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing “LA SÉPARATION” Composed by Dominique Charpentier Performed by Dominique Charpentier
"AUTUMN LEAVES" Written by Jacques Prevert and Joseph Kosma Courtesy of MPL Music Publishing Arranged and Performed by Dominique Charpentier
“MITCHELL’S SUICIDE” Composed by Dominique Charpentier Performed by Dominique Charpentier
“SWALE” Written by Podington Bear Performed by Podington Bear
“DEJECTED” Written by Podington Bear Performed by Podington Bear
12 “A LIMITED TIME LEFT” Composed by Dominique Charpentier Performed by Dominique Charpentier
“DOUCE NUIT” Composed by Dominique Charpentier Performed by Dominique Charpentier
“TOUJOURS LÀ” Composed by Dominique Charpentier Performed by Dominique Charpentier
“MEMORY WIND” Written by Podington Bear Performed by Podington Bear
“INTERLUDE Nº1” Composed by Dominique Charpentier Performed by Dominique Charpentier
“LE CHAGRIN” Composed by Dominique Charpentier Performed by Dominique Charpentier
“FLOATING IN SPACE” Written by Podington Bear Performed by Podington Bear
"DON’T MAKE ME OVER" Written by Hal David and Burt F Bacharach Published by BMG Gold Songs (ASCAP) obo itself and Songs of Fujimusic (ASCAP) and New Hidden Valley Music Co (ASCAP) Performed by Dionne Warwick Courtesy of Rhino Entertainment Company By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing
“CYLINDER FIVE” Written and Produced by Chris Zabriskie Performed by Chris Zabriskie
“PASSAGE” Composed by Dominique Charpentier Performed by Dominique Charpentier
13 In memoriam STEVEN ROBBINS 1956-2016
© 2021 Wingspan Media Partners, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
14