Indie Film of the Day: ‘The Accompanist’ @ Silicon Beach FF

Our Indie Film of the Day is The Accompanist, set to open Silicon Beach Film Festival on Friday, June 14th. The exclusive movie presentation will be followed by a Q&A with members of the cast & crew.

The event will be hosted by the Silicon Beach Film Festival at the Cinemark 18 & XD at the Promenade, Howard Hughes Center, Los Angeles. Tickets are now available through the festival website.

This Silicon Beach Film Festival follows the film’s success at the Cannes Film Market where The Accompanist was sold to Pro-Fun Media, meaning it will be distributed across a dozen territories in Europe.

Silicon Beach Film Festival Program Director Peter Greene said: “We are excited to screen Frederick Keeve’s exciting new feature film The Accompanist at our festival.  We showed his wonderful short film Designated Caretaker Redux at one of our other festivals and enjoy seeing how Frederick’s filmmaking skills have grown since then. His and the film’s passion and energy are a joy to behold.”

Set in the heart of Los Angeles, The Accompanist tells the story of a troubled ballet star who is seeking a comeback and finds salvation in a piano accompanist who can shapeshift time with his music. When the ballet dancer’s boyfriend sees the growing attraction between the dancer and the pianist, an all-out war ensues to see whose love will win out.

The Accompanist, a fantasy/drama gay love story incorporating magical realism, reflects Keeve’s vision in its theme: “using the healing power of art to unite and celebrate who we truly are”.

The film delves into family relationships & tragedy, exposing the audience to beautiful classical music and realistically portrayed classical ballet. Mr. Keeve has completed the sequel to this film entitled, The Accompanist Awakening: The Web of Power, to be filmed in 2020.

The Accompanist features a diverse cast, portraying the gay male experience through realistic, complex characters and shining a light onto gay relationships as well as family drama, covering such areas as domestic violence, sex, career ambition, love, and connection.

The Accompanist is a timely gay love story with music at its heart, featuring a beautiful array of classical music. It stars director, writer, producer, and actor Frederick Keeve in a leading role alongside dancer & actor Ricky Palomino and actor Aaron Cavette. The film also features dancer & actress Juliet Doherty, currently starring in Driven to Dance on Netflix.

The Accompanist was shot in LA and is supported by a stellar cast & crew, including: Angelle Brooks (V.I.P.); Juliet Doherty, who recently played the romantic lead in the feature film Free Dance directed by Michael Damian; and cinematographer David M. Parks.

Also featured is seasoned sound designer Wayne Peet, who has previously worked on classic music documentaries about Bob Dylan & Paul McCartney and was sound mixer and/or composer on such film classics as Bull Durham, The Spitfire Grill, White Men Can’t Jump, Blaze, and Scream 2.

Check out the trailer for The Accompanist here. Follow this groundbreaking movie for updates on Instagram now.

Frederick Keeve is an independent filmmaker who produced, wrote, directed and composed the score for the documentary From Russia to Hollywood: The 100-Year Odyssey of Chekhov and Shdanoff, narrated by Gregory Peck. The film closed the Hollywood Film Festival at the iconic Paramount Theatre at Paramount Studios and was a featured selection at the London Film Festival.

Keeve also wrote, directed, and produced the multi-award winning short film Designated Caretaker Redux starring W. Morgan Sheppard, and has been a member of The Producers Guild of America (PGA) for more than ten years. He teamed up with British producer Julie Eagleton for The Accompanist.

Mr. Keeve creates his art, especially in filmmaking, from a very personal space. In The Accompanist, the idea was born as he sat at the grand piano at a local ballet studio where he plays piano for ballet classes. He grew up trained as a classical pianist and wanted a vehicle not only to be able to use his original piano music for the score, but to tell the story of gay love against the backdrop of classical ballet and classical music.

Keeve felt the LGBTQ community has been underserved as far as complex stories that show gay love realistically with all its angst and beauty. Mixing in a bit of magical realism and family drama in protagonist Jason’s relationship with his teenage children, he evokes a compelling story full of tragedy & hope.

Frederick Keeve has been writing most of his life, either for pleasure, academically, for research, or professionally for the entertainment business. His first short story, The Lost Island, was published in a limited edition when he was in sixth grade. He has also been making films since he was 10 years old growing up in Santa Monica together with his brother, writer-director Douglas Keeve, who is living in New York.

Mr. Keeve’s first film was Maxine Waters EPC, starring Edward Alan Young. This first foray into filmmaking was a documentary short film, seen by hundreds of thousands of viewers on KCET public television, about an employment preparation center in South Central Los Angeles.

Keeve next conceived, wrote, directed, produced, and composed the music for the award-winning film From Russia to Hollywood: The 100-Year Odyssey of Chekhov and Shdanoff, which featured many legendary stars & directors and was Gregory Peck’s last completed film.

Keeve recently completed a Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology. His published dissertation is entitled “A Phenomenological Study of the Experience of Humanist, Spiritual and Transpersonal Films on Positive Organizational Behaviors in the Workplace”.

Keeve enjoys combining his passion for film with his long-time interest in psychology, media, music, and organizational studies. He is also an accomplished musician, music director, accompanist, and composer.

In 2010, he wrote the music, book, and lyrics for an original musical, Three: Songs from the Heart, produced in Los Angeles under the auspices of the Festival of New American Musicals. Keeve was fortunate to attract Broadway caliber talent to his project, including Ilene Graff in the lead role, Marcus Choi (Hamilton), and Lance Roberts (My Fair Lady) helming the director’s chair.

Frederick Keeve’s previous project, Designated Caretaker Redux, was an acclaimed short which will be shot as a full-length feature film in 2020. He is passionate about storytelling, filmmaking, and the creative arts. In addition to being an educator, teacher, counselor, and actor, Keeve has been writing screenplays for about 20 years. He has had the good fortune to see some of them developed and produced into films. Mr. Keeve’s completed films also include the award-winning short Cadillac City.

Mr. Keeve currently has many feature-length, narrative screenplays in development and pre-production. He has a unique voice coupled with a highly refined aesthetic that fuels his lifelong goal is to elevate people’s consciousness through art: as a filmmaker, producer, composer, musician, director, writer, and actor.

Silicon Beach Film festival arose from the dedication of Jon Gursha and Peter Greene, who are the creators of the Marina del Rey and Culver City Film Festivals and Silicon Beach Film Distribution. The festival, now in its fourth year, will screen all its official selections from June 14th to the 20th at The Promenade, Howard Hughes Center, Los Angeles.