Love is not Love
Is love a reality or a myth? Love is not Love is an independent film by Stephen Keep Mills which was recently awarded in multiple categories in Sicily Independent Film Awards. The film is about an early December in New York City when everyone is on the hunt for love. Why? Because they haven’t found it and because they haven’t found it, they make it into a myth and chase the myth instead. That is not love in this romantic drama of fantasy, fate, and yearning.
Stephen Keep Mills (Writer/Director/Actor/Producer) started out as an actor leaving the Yale Drama School in the spring of 1969 to join the Guthrie Theatre and then appearing over the next seventeen years with many regional companies in both the US and Canada. He performed in "The Shadow Box", "Story Theatre" and "Metamorphosis" on Broadway and in several Off-Broadway houses including The Roundabout Theatre and The Public where his performance in Vaclav Havel's "A Private View" earned him a Drama Desk nomination.
He is more attracted to the irrational swirl of interior particles of the human condition than the linear logic of exterior plots—sort of a psychological pointillism. The most epic dramas are all silently pitched on internal battlefields and we enter them like dreams, cracking the code of their riddles. Stephen puts the viewers in places and situations they recognize but without dropping the breadcrumbs to tell them how they got there. He opens their private eye onto the impressionistic world of the Interior.
The credits of this award winning director include guest-starring roles in over 25 episodic shows and Movies Of The Week, a regular stint on the series "Flo" and a recurring role on the Sci-Fi series "VR-5."
In the late 1990's, Mills began directing and producing his own written works on stage, gaining critical notice with "SquareOne" in LA as well as an Ovation Nomination for his adaptation of "A Christmas Carol: The Ghost Story of Christmas" which he directed in collaboration with DeafWest Theatre in American Sign Language. In 2003, he produced and acted in the film of his play "Hotel Lobby", and thereafter cast himself full-time as a filmmaker.
Stephen made his directorial debut with the 15-minute film "A Cigar at the Beach" (2005) which screened world-wide in 166 festivals, winning 47 awards. He followed up with another short "LIMINAL" in 2008 that accumulated 84 festival screenings and 30 awards. Mills is a member of Academy Award Winner Bobby Moresco’s Actors’ Gym and is included in Del Weston’s (AOF) Top 100 Indie Filmmakers In The World Part 1. He is mortally coached by the “living” ghost of Stella Adler. “Love is not Love” marks Mills’ first feature as director.
Love is not Love won the best feature, best producer, and best feature directing of the Sicily Independent Film Awards for Stephen Keep Mills.