Sydney Levine

There is a little known niche in the international film business of buying and selling that is inhabited by a handful of professionals called Buyers' Reps. They acquire films on behalf of a slate of distributors. There are surely other women in this unique and difficult niche service group who are not named below, and I ask forgiveness if I have not included them here. The job of buying for distributors around the world involves so many interpersonal skills, the buyers (distributors) interacting with the sellers (international sales agents), reading scripts, watching films, negotiating deals, making everyone happy in a business which is notoriously unhappy for one reason or another (usually economic) takes a heavy toll. These women are survivors and they have been plying their trade for a generation and not without a struggle. There are men in this fields as well, Gordon Steel who invented the niche, Darius Kapfer, Andre Boissier, and others, and in tribute, two who died so prematurely - Steve Hirsch and Richard Glasser, so beloved by everyone that it still hurts to remember. As new distributors survey the wide array of sellers and product, they need to consider the services of these veterans who have maintained strong relationships in the business of buying and selling for a generation already.