Biography of Filmmaker Kevin G. Bender

Kevin G. Bender is an alumnus of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, from which he graduated magna-cum laude with distinction in 2008 with a concentration in Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity. He is also a 2004 graduate of the International Baccalaureate Program, and in high school was Battalion Commander of his high school ROTC unit and was regional champion of Forensics extemporaneous speaking for two consecutive years. He is presently an accountant living in Norfolk, Virginia.

Kevin G. Bender's first experience with true professional filmmaking came during junior year of high school when he attended the Virginia Governor's School for the Humanities, where he took classes in film production, non-linear editing, lighting, and was trained principally as a cinematographer (director of photography). He helped produce and served as director of photography on several mini-projects there. After Governor's School, he purchased his own digital video camera and produced and edited his first independent short-film, A Day in the Life of a Cat, a seventeen-minute documentary featuring his parents' cats Maggie and Tommie in their daily routines. His second short film was Nature's Fury, an impromptu documentary of a tree falling in his backyard in the midst of Hurricane Isabel in September 2003.

The biggest project of his early filmmaking career was his high school's Senior Slide Show and memory video, a 35-minute (65-minute extended) series of videos and still photographs showcasing the high school lives of his classmates. The film premiered before the entire student body and some gathered faculty and parents (an audience of over 1,000) and took in over $500 in revenue. Until recently, it was the most successful film he has thus far directed. After high school, he produced the crown jewel of his early cinema achievement, his first true feature film and 50-minute documentary of beach week, Seven Days Under the Sun. The experimental and non-traditional cinema-verite documentary remains what is perhaps one of his greatest filmmaking acheivements.

Kevin G. Bender began attending the University of Virginia in September 2004, where he met-up with former Governor's School classmate and fellow UVa student Ryan McElveen to co-produce and direct his second feature film, Life's a Smoose, a quirky and unusual political satire. Life's a Smoose premiered at the University of Virginia's Salmagundi Film Festival at Newcomb Theatre in April 2007 before an audience of 100 people. After Smoose, Kevin G. Bender produced a series of small projects, including training videos, a workout video, several documentaries, a slide show, and the sequel A Day in the Life of a Cat 2. He then entered into a partnership with fellow UVa-student Brooke Larson, who co-wrote and produced the short film Running Out of Time, after which he changed the name of his production company from AmrasSaralonde Films to RiverBend Films.

He then went into pre-production on the 53-minute feature film and social satire Below the Beltway, featuring the cast of Life's a Smoose. Below the Beltway remained in production until January 2007 and premiered at the University of Virginia's Newcomb Hall Theatre on February 26th 2007. Kevin G. Bender then went on to produce two more short films, A Day in the Life of a Cat 3, the third and final installment of the trilogy, and the first film he shot in true 1080 High Definition, and a promotional video.

In April 2008, Kevin G. Bender and RiverBend Films recently their largest, most ambitious, and most critically-acclaimed film to-date, the 80-minute romantic comedy and bildungsroman, The Receipt, written by Rachel Bernstein and co-produced by Rachel Bernstein, Kyle Ringgenberg, and Michael Benonis, which premiered to rave reviews on April 9th 2008 in Charlottesville Virginia. The Receipt remains the most ambitious film ever produced by an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia to-date and the most successful film from RiverBend Films with a total viewership of several thousand and a revenue intake of over $650.00. The Receipt also became the first film from RiverBend Films to be featured on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

The most recent production to come from filmmaker Kevin G. Bender is the 2009 film The Artist, which reunited many of the cast and crew of The Receipt, including Matthew Marcus, Kyle Ringgenberg, Zachary Pruckowski, and Gabrielle Moskey. The Artist would top The Receipt in length and complexity, exceeding 100 minutes in final length, requiring a cast and crew of over 50 to complete, and featuring the most complex array of special and visual effects that any film from RiverBend Films has ever attempted. The Artist made its World Premiere on May 1st, 2009, in Charlottesville, Virginia, in front of an audience of over 200 people.

[Visit Kevin G. Bender's IMDb Page].