Asher

TFI Suppport

Tribeca All Access® 2006

Logline

An ambitious college senior and committed atheist starts to see things differently after he infiltrates a militant religious cult. But is it spiritual clarity or incipient mania?

Asher

Francisco Ordoñez

Director

Born and raised in Jackson Heights, Queens, Francisco Ordoñez graduated with a bachelor's degree in Sociology from Queens College. Recently, he completed his M.F.A. at Columbia University's Film Program, where he was honored as a Film Division Fellow. Kulture Machine, the production company that Francisco co-founded with two Columbia classmates, was named to Filmmaker Magazine's ”25 New Faces of Indie Film, 2004.” Francisco’s feature screenplay, ASHER, reached the semifinalist round at the 2002 HBO Latino Screenwriter's Lab, and was one of five scripts honored by the Columbia Film Division with a staged reading during the University’s 2005 Film Festival. Currently, Kulture Machine is raising financing for ASHER, which will be Francisco’s first feature film, a low-budget expansion of his short, “St. Paul,” which to date has been awarded Best Short Film at the 2005 New York Latino Film Festival, Jury Award at the 2005 Miami Short Film Festival, and was a Semi-Finalist at the 2005 Angelus Awards.

Kulture Machine

Producer

Kulture Machine is a film production company designed to build upon the interdisciplinary approach to filmmaking that its partners were exposed to at Columbia University's School of the Arts Graduate Film Program.  The partners, Dennis Lee, Joe Turner Lin, Milton Liu, Julie Anne Meerschwam, and Francisco Ordoñez, realized their unique ability to collaborate on film productions early on, and decided to unify their already similar visions of narrative and visual interests into an entity that could support them creatively.  Breaking away from the usual ideas of staying within the confines of a particular discipline, whether it be writing, directing or producing, Kulture Machine embraces the necessity of true collaboration within the field as a way of generating better stories, better productions and ultimately better films.