Award Winning Documentary The Glamorous Lie Wins Bronze Award, Screens at 2nd Annual TrindieFest

LOS ANGELES - Sept. 17, 2013 - PRLog -- YaVaughnie Wilkins’ autobiographical documentary film THE GLAMOROUS LIE has faced a tumultuous road since it started making the rounds of film festivals last fall.  For a time, the feature documentary, which chronicles her life and her eight and a half year relationship with Infor CEO, former Oracle executive and Obama economic advisor Charles E. Phillips, Jr. was buffeted by Phillips’ lawyers efforts to quash festival screenings of the film. Now, following a brand-new cut and a passel of awards, TrindieFest Film Festival selected THE GLAMOROUS LIE to screen at its Second Annual Festival this past Saturday at the historic SCRT Theatre, located in Trinidad, Colorado.  Then, at a dinner gala Awards ceremony held on Sunday September 15, TrindieFest selected THE GLAMOROUS LIE to win the Bronze Award in the Documentary Category.

Filmmaker YaVaughnie Wilkins was on hand to receive the award.  “I’m so grateful to be honored here in Colorado,” Wilkins said.  “This is a wonderful, boutique festival, and I’m pleased to be in the company of so many talented filmmakers who screened here.  I thank TrindieFest for choosing my film.  It’s hugely important in helping get my story told.”

This is the second TrindieFest, but the fifth award for THE GLAMOROUS LIE.  The original version of the explosive documentary THE GLAMOROUS LIE made its world premiere at the Harlem International Film Festival September 20, 2012, winning the Audience Award for a documentary (www.harleminternationalfilmfestival.org). Despite legal threats that pressured festivals to cancel screenings at three festivals, the film went on to screen at the Bel-Air Film Festival and the LA Femme International Film Festival last October, and made its international debut at the Oaxaca Film Festivalin November 2012. Bel Air’s full-throated support was a bellwether for the film; THE GLAMOROUS LIE took home both the Audience and Jury Awards for Best Documentary.  Then, this past January, the film took home a Gold Award from the 2012 California Film Awards for Best Feature Documentary http://www.calfilmawards.com.

THE GLAMOROUS LIE tells a story that would make for a fantastic fictional drama: high-placed boyfriend caught cheating; scorned girlfriend seeks very public acknowledgement. Billboards throughout the country showing a very literal picture of couple, with the message “you are my soul mate forever” posted larger than life over the streets of New York, Atlanta and Silicon Valley.

But this was no fictional drama: it was, and it is, real. Wilkins and Phillips’ break-up played out in newspaper and television outlets around the world, but it was always characterized as a story of the wrath of a woman scorned and the height to which she had gone to call out her cheating boyfriend.  But that was only part of the story.

The public knew little about Wilkins, the woman behind the billboards, and less still about how far Phillips would go to cover up the truth about their relationship. THE GLAMOROUS LIE tells Wilkins’ account of the years leading up to, during and after the relationship.

THE GLAMOROUS LIE both sets up the drama of the relationship with Phillips and follows Wilkins many months after the infamous billboard incident as she tries to move on with her life, starting her home products business ReJuvenescence and other businesses while she continues to struggle with her troubled past.  (www.getrejuvenescence.com).

Phillips’ lawyers not only threatened the festivals that made THE GLAMOROUS LIE an official selection; they sent “background materials” to media in order to mute press coverage of the film.  The TrindieFest screening let the public—as well as the media—see the film for themselves.

Wilkins says, “[Phillips], his associates and his legal team know they can't intimidate me so they have resorted to threatening everyone associated with me, including the film festivals and theaters who, before receiving the threatening cease and desist letters, had enthusiastically accepted THE GLAMOROUS LIE as an ‘Official Selection’ screening.”  The threats were toothless; no film festival or theatre were ever sued, and as the legal threats subsided, the film went on to screen to enthusiastic audiences without incident at Slamdance in January, The Independent Feature Showcase (IFS) and LA IndieFest in March; and TrindieFest this past weekend.

Wilkins concludes, “I am not afraid of people finding out who the ‘real’ YaVaughnie Wilkins is; I’ve put it on screen and paper for all to see.  Phillips cannot say the same.  We are looking forward to each festival screening and stand ready in each case to blunt Phillips’ attempts to quash them.”

The film’s ongoing drama—Wilkins, family members, friends, businesses associates and even casual past acquaintances remain victims of ongoing surveillance and intimidation—makes the final chapter of THE GLAMOROUS LIE a softer than cliff’s edge, with another chapter perhaps yet to be written.