Instant Life

Instant Life tells the story of Yolanda Signorelli von Braunhut, the heiress to the Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys fortune, who is engaged in a David and Goliath legal battle with a large toy company to regain control over her husband’s iconic aquatic novelty. Now dispossessed of her sole source of income, Signorelli von Braunhut lives alone without electricity or running water on the Sea-Monkeys estate along the Potomac River where she struggles to restore the novelty’s reputation by regaining ownership of the Sea Monkeys and re-introducing the secret Sea-Monkeys formula to the world.

Status

In production

About the Filmmakers

Director/ Producer

Mark Becker
Mark Becker

Mark Becker co-directed and edited the documentary Art and Craft (2014), which was shortlisted for the 2015 Academy Awards, won recognition with the National Board of Review, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and screened theatrically via Oscilloscope Laboratories. Becker directed and edited the Emmy-nominated documentary Pressure Cooker (2008) for Participant Media; the film won jury and audience awards at many film festivals before opening theatrically. He produced, directed and edited the documentary Romantico (2005), which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, received two Independent Spirit Award nominations (including Best Documentary), and was released theatrically by Kino International. Becker produced and edited the documentary Elevate (2011), wrote and edited the Emmy-nominated documentary Circo (2010), and was one of two editors on the acclaimed Lost Boys of Sudan (2003), winner of an Independent Spirit Award. He is currently developing documentary and narrative films, and consulting on several documentaries in various stages of production. Previously, Becker worked at Lucasfilm as a documentary editor for several years and received his MA in documentary film from Stanford University.

Director/ Producer

Aaron Schock
Aaron Schock

Emmy-nominated director Aaron Schock holds a MA in public policy from Columbia University and worked in community development in the South Bronx before making documentary films. His film CIRCO (2011), which premiered as the Los Angeles and BFI London Film Festivals, won the grand jury prize at the Hamptons International Film Festival and the Malaga International Film Festival in Spain (among many awards at other festivals), was distributed theatrically in the US, UK, and Canada and shown nationally on PBS’s Independent Lens and internationally on HBO. His most recent film LA LAGUNA (2016) won the 2016 Cinema Eye Honors Award for Best Documentary Short, and has received best documentary and other awards from festivals in Woodstock, Palm Springs, Aspen, and Toronto. He lives in New York City.