FilmAcres most recent project was the full-length feature film A Piece of Eden.It was filmed on location in Northern Indiana over a 50 day shooting schedule. Featured in the 1999 Chicago International Film Festival, A Piece of Eden placed third, among hundreds of films, in the Audience Choice Awards. A Piece of Eden is a bittersweet comedy that follows three generations of the unlucky Tredici family from Corsica in the 1940's to an Indiana fruit farm in the present. Young Bob, the first member of the family born in America, is heir to the family farm, but has no interest in farming and leaves to pursue a show business career in New York. When his father becomes ill, Bob returns and tries to revitalize the farm while cousin Greg tries to take it away from him. Tyne Daly, Frederic Forrest, Andreas Katsulas, Robert Breuler, Marc Grapey, Rebecca Harrell, Irma St. Paule, and Tristan Rogers star in this film showing the complex dynamics of a family with wonderful and amusing characterizations. It is directed and produced by John Hancock who directed Bang the Drum Slowly with Robert DeNiro, a picture which opened to wildly enthusiastic reviews, including Richard Schickel's Time Magazine rave that it was "very possibly the best movie about sport ever made in this country." He also directed Weeds with Nick Nolte, and five other nationally distributed films. "A Piece of Eden has an evocative, lyrical and elegiac sense of the land, and of one man's struggle to connect with his past. I found it really charming and moving. It's rare that you see a film that addresses the sense of abundance and blessing in America. There are moments in this film that live up to its title, and you feel an enormous sense of wonder at nature. John Hancock's most personal and most passionate film." John Lahr, drama critic for The New Yorker Magazine "I really had a good time watching A Piece of Eden. The cast is good; Happy is great. A wonderful evening." Donald Graham, Chairman of the Board Washington Post Company "I loved the movie. The last thing I was expecting to do ­ I mean, there was a happy end ­ was to burst into tears." John Casey, winner National Book Award for Spartina "It's refreshing to see something human and loving nowadays. The music is consistently right, andwhat can one say about music? - other than I LIKED EVERY NOTE, every moment of it. There is some perfect casting: Daly and Forrest and St. Paule, as well as the sweet and charming Rebecca Harrell (I think she's a winner) and the wonderful Katsulas. The THANG-that-shakes-the-apples scene is one of the funniest I've ever seen ­ and I'm not that much on 'physical humor.' What the hell IS that machina-del diablo called?!?" Robert Lee Riffle, author of the award winning book, The Tropical Look "This is the kind of movie people say they've been waiting for, about people, without profanity and violence. Fortunately, contrary to a lot of what's out there, A Piece of Eden proves that what's human can also be entertaining." Haskell Wexler, Cinematographer "For me the significance of the film is that John Hancock is back. With Bang the Drum Slowly and a couple of other films, he became one of the outstanding movie directors of his generation. Now he is back with a film that bears his unmistakable signature." Eric Bentley, Critic & Author "The movie did everything: we howled with laughter and puddled up (the father/son relationship was killer -- but then all the relationships were wonderful, and the cast worked so beautifully together ­ utterly believable characters.) I remembered Rebecca Harrell's much younger face from Prancer, and was positively enraptured by her radiance. Like a Rembrandt milkmaid during apple harvest. The film as a whole reminded me of Capra: such humanity and tenderness in the humor. And the glorious visuals! I can't imagine a sensate human being not wishing to spend a sunny fall day picking apples in those orchards." Gloria Brame, author of Alternate Loving "a moving, powerfully affecting drama in which you discover that you can go home again ­ but not without laughter and tears." Helen Whitney, Director/Writer/Producer "A minor miracle of a movie. In a time when most films are about nothing, A Piece of Eden is about everything. Its offers comfort in a time when the dissolution of the family has become all too common. You leave it filled with hope, and any film that can do that is one to be cherished." Andrew Talleckson, Author "I've watched it five times and could watch it five more. I loved it." Diane Laird, Author