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TINY FURNITUREPress ContactDISTRIBUTION CONTACTIFC FilmsPublicity/MarketingCourtney OttT 646 273 7214ceott@ifcfilms.comLaura SokT 917 542 6330lasok@ifcfilms.comIFC FilmsSales/DistributionMark BoxerT 917 542 6333maboxer@ifcfilms.comJustin DiPietroT 646 273 7211jdipietro@ifcfilms.com

SHORT SUMMARY22-year-old Aura returns home to her artistmother’s TriBeCa loft with the following: a uselessfilm theory degree, 357 hits on her Youtube page, aboyfriend who’s left her to find himself at BurningMan, a dying hamster, and her tail between herlegs. Luckily, her trainwreck childhood best friendnever left home, the restaurant down the block ishiring, and ill-advised romantic possibilities lurkaround every corner. Aura quickly throws awayher liberal-arts clogs and careens into her old/new life: a dead-end hostess job, pathetic Brooklyn“art shows,” drinking all the wine in her mother’sneatly organized cabinets, competing with herprodigious teenage sister, and desperate sex in agiant metal pipe. Surrounded on all sides by whatshe could become, Aura just wants someone totell her who she is. Tiny Furniture was shot inDunham’s family home, starring Dunham, hermother (photographer Laurie Simmons) and herprecocious sister Grace.

LONG SUMMARYIt’s September, and Aura (LENA DUNHAM)arrives home after four years at liberal arts college.Dunham’s real-life mother (LAURIE SIMMONS)and sister (GRACE DUNHAM) play Siri andNadine, Aura’s super-successful mother andsuper-ambitious younger sister. Aura is lookingfor sympathy, or maybe just some attention, butNadine declares her sister’s life “like the epilogueto Felicity,” and Siri glibly advises her to “neverregret anything, and never look back.” But Aurahas never met a feeling she didn’t want to wallowin. Funny, self-aware, but a little bit spoiled and alot bit overdramatic, Aura is searching for an entrypoint into life post-college (but she’d also like tostay under the covers for a little while.)Her old life has been waiting for her – the takeoutis just a phone call away, and her over-privileged highschool friends never left home. The glamorous andunsupervised Charlotte (JEMIMA KIRKE) greetsAura with an involuntary slap in the face and vowsnever to let her out of her sight again. At a partyon a fire escape in the East Village, Aura meets theintriguing Jed (ALEX KARPOVSKY), a filmmaker“in town for meetings.” Meanwhile, she lands a jobas a restaurant hostess, where she meets The Chef,aka Keith (DAVID CALL), a mustachioed prettyboy with a penchant for making Aura feel belittledand seduced all at the same time. Still, it feels to Auralike nothing is happening, especially compared toher mother’s early-twenties in the 1970’s Soho artworld, chronicled in pithy journal entries that Aurahas taken to reading illegally. When Siri and Nadineleave for a college tour, it’s the perfect time for therestless Aura to stir up some trouble.First order of business: get a man in the house. Inthe middle of what may or may not be a date with thedirector Jed, Aura invites him to stay in the loft whilehe’s in town, and eagerly starts him on a regimen ofher mother’s wine and frozen entrees. As the daystick by, freeloader Jed moves from the air mattressto Siri’s room into – reluctantly, on his part, because“girls often sweat the bed” – Aura’s bed. By day, sheponders the maddeningly flirtatious yet elusive chef,who reveals that he has a rageful girlfriend. Charlotte,meanwhile, has nowhere else to be than whereverAura is going; her constant attention and indulgentlifestyle are both addictive and irksome. Secondorder of business: get a gallery show. Aura’s collegevideo art (which has already garnered 375 hits onYoutube) gets a spot in the show that Charlotte is“curating” (whatever that means.)But Aura has bigger things to worry about: hermother has come home, with Nadine, and confrontsAura with one question: “Who drank all my wine?”After a petulant, tearful confrontation, Siri agreesto let Jed keep sleeping on the floor, although shemakes her disapproval known. Aura also gets herfirst paycheck, for an amount so paltry that shedecides to quit on the spot. The art show turnsout to be a pitiful ‘open studio.’ This is nothinglike what her mother’s journals describe. Frankie(MERRITT WEVER), the clog-wearing collegefriend that Aura has been studiously avoiding,arrives and calls Aura out on her bad manners.Suddenly, the chef arrives and suggests they finda secluded spot. Her artistic future is in shambles,she’s abandoned her friends, and all that awaits herat home is a furious mother and a skinny sister Aura is primed to do something very, very reckless.Tiny Furniture explores the depths ofromantic humiliation and the heights of postcollege confusion; the darkest parts of the bigcity’s bright lights and the newest ways to tell theoldest story in the book.

Dec 2009New York CityRUN TIME 98 MinCAMERA Canon 7DCOMPLETEDLOCATIONPRODUCTION DETAILSTiny Furniture was conceived last October, shotlast November, and completed this January. It wasDunham’s first time working with professionalproducers and paid crew. She chose her ownfamily as co-stars, and set most of the movie ather parents’ own Tribeca loft. The decision toshoot with the Canon 7D, an HD SLR still/videocamera, makes this one of the first feature films toutilize this new technology. By choosing to workwith Jody Lee Lipes as cinematographer, Dunhamwas opting for a more formally rigorous aestheticof careful composition than her previous work.Dunham and Lipes decided to shoot more thanhalf the film with no coverage at all; many sceneswere executed in just one shot.

INSPIRATION & ACCLAIMDunham’s first film, Creative Nonfiction, alsostarred Dunham as a character based on herself,and depicted a frustrating collegiate non-romancebased on one from Dunham’s own life, performedby non-actors and shot in the dorm rooms andhallways of Oberlin College. As Michael Tully wrotein Hammer to Nail this year, “Tiny Furniture isn’tjust a major leap forward [for Dunham.] It’s likea rocket launch to a bigger and brighter planet.”Starring in your own movie about a narcissisticgirl is a careful high-wire act of exhibitionism andself-parody, but Dunham decided to walk the lineagain with her second feature, adding to a grandtradition of personal filmmaking, inspired by classic1970’s neurosis-comedy and the best/worst SandraBullock romantic comedies.The film premiered at the SXSW Film Festivalin March 2010, and went on to win the Jury Prizefor Best Narrative, as well as a generous cashaward from the Chicken & Egg Foundation for BestEmergent Narrative Female Director. An articlein The New York Times followed the award, aprofile of Lena by fellow autobiographer DavidCarr, entitled, “Lena Dunham finds Her Worthin Tiny Furniture”. Glowing reviews in Variety,Indiewire, LA Weekly, The Village Voice camenext; the twitterati and blogosphere have throwntheir support behind the film. A few weeks after itspremiere, the film was acquired by IFC Films, andwill be released theatrically in the Fall of 2010.

CREWCASTWRITER / DIRECTORLena DunhamKyle Martin & Alicia Van CouveringCINEMATOGRAPHER Jody Lee LipesEDITOR Lance EdmandsCO-PRODUCER Alice WangSOUND Micah BloombergFOCUS Joe AndersonGAFFER Jeff PeixotoGRIP Anna FarrellART Jade HealySCRIPT SUP Julia NewmanCOLORIST Sam Daley / TechnicolorPOST SOUND Gene ParkCOMPOSER Teddy BlanksGRAPHIC deSign CHIPSAURAPRODUCERSSIRILena DunhamLaurie SimmonsNADINE Grace DunhamCANDICE Rachel HoweFRANKIE Merritt WeverASHLYNN Amy SeimetzJED Alex KarpovskyCHARLOTTE Jemima KirkeKEITH David CallJULIA Sarah Sophie FlickerNOELLE Garland HunterJACK Isen Hunter

ABOUT CAST & CREWExactly one year before Tiny Furniture’s SXSWPremiere, Dunham met Lipes, as well as producerKyle Martin and editor Lance Edmands, atSXSW in 2009, who had all graduated from NYUfilm school together in 2004. She and producerAlicia Van Couvering (also NYU ’04) met whenVan Couvering interviewed her for FilmmakerMagazine at SXSW. Lena wrote the script inone week, with her cast already in mind; someof them relatives, the others friends. She hadmet Alex Karpovsky (“Jed”) at an afterpartyfor his SXSW film, Trust Us, This Is All MadeUp. She has known Jemima Kirke (“Charlotte”)since childhood, and Garland and Isen Hunter(the neighbors “Noelle” and “Jack”) live in theapartment below the Dunham Family in Tribeca.CAST BIOSLENA DUNHAM Writer / Director / “Aura”Lena graduated from Oberlin College in 2008, whereshe studied Creative Writing. Her first short film,Dealing, premiered at the 2007 Slamdance FilmFestival. Her first feature, Creative Nonfiction,premiered at SXSW 2009 and enjoyed a theatricalpremiere at Anthology Film Archives. She has madetwo webseries, Tight Shots (nerve.com) andDelusional Downtown Divas (delusionaldowntowndivas.com). In 2009, she was commissioned tomake ten more episodes of DDD to project at theGuggenheim’s first annual Art Awards, an eventfor which she also hosted and wrote the teleplay. In2009, she was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s“25 New Faces of Independent Film.” As an actress,she will soon appear in Mildred Pierce, by ToddHaynes and The Innkeeper by Ti West. She writesabout film and interesting characters for variouspublications, including Interview, The Onion A/VClub, HammertoNail.com, and she loves to tweet(twitter.com/lenadunham).LAURIE SIMMONS “Siri”Laurie Simmons is an internationally recognizedartist. Since the mid-70’s, Simmons has stagedscenes for her camera with dolls, ventriloquistdummies, mannequins and occasionally people,to create images with intensely psychologicalsubtexts. Her photographic based works arecollected by many museums including in NewYork: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, TheMuseum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museumof American Art and the Guggenheim as well asThe Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles,Walker Art Center and the Hara Museum, Tokyo.In 2006 she produced and directed her first filmtitled The Music of Regret, starring Meryl Streep,Adam Guettel and the Alvin Ailey 2 Dancerswith cinematography by Ed Lachman. The filmpremiered at The Museum of Modern Art, NewYork, and has been screened at many internationalmuseums and film festivals. Simmons was featuredin Season 4 of the PBS series “Art 21: Art in theTwenty- First Century”. Simmons lives and worksin New York City and Cornwall, Connecticut withher husband, the painter Carroll Dunham and theirtwo daughters Lena and Grace.GRACE DUNHAM “Nadine”Grace Dunham was born in New York City in 1992.She is currently a senior at Saint Ann’s School inBrooklyn, New York, where she is a contributingwriter to the Saint Ann’s Ram and a yearbook staffmember. She is an involved playwright and theaterdirector, and an active debater, having been one offour elected candidates for president of PrincetonModel Congress (nb: “State of Grace” campaignbuttons still available for purchase.) She is the 2009recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s LouiseLouis/Emily F. Bourne poetry prize. She willmatriculate at Brown University in the fall of 2010.ALEX KARPOVSKY “Jed”Alex studied visual ethnography at OxfordUniversity before wasting the next few yearsof his life embracing obscure and misguidedperformance art. He now acts and makes movies.Alex’s debut feature, The Hole Story, earned