SANTA FE, NM.- Georgia O’Keeffe’s life and art continue to fascinate public imagination, as is evident with the upcoming premiere of the Sony Pictures Television original film for Lifetime, Georgia O’Keeffe, scheduled to air in September 19, 2009. Starring three-time Academy Award®, Golden Globe® and Emmy Award® nominee Joan Allen (The Contender, The Upside of Anger) and Academy Award, Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner Jeremy Irons (Reversal of Fortune, Elizabeth I), the film is directed by Academy Award nominee Bob Balaban, who produced Gosford Park, the sly poke at the British class system that so delighted movie audiences. Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cristofer wrote the script for the film. Allen, who has twice interpreted O’Keeffe’s voice in readings of her letters, serves as one of the film’s executive producers along with Emmy nominated producer Joshua D. Maurer (Introducing Dorothy Dandridge) and Alixandre Witlin (Dodson’s Journey). Tony Mark (And Starring Poncho Villa as Himself) is a producer.

Georgia O’Keeffe revisits the turbulent, 20-year relationship of O’Keeffe (Allen) and her husband, legendary photographer Alfred Stieglitz (Irons). The film explores their complex interdependence, in which O’Keeffe struggled to accommodate Stieglitz’s powerful persona while trying to establish an independent artistic path of her own. As O’Keeffe’s fame grew, she increasingly needed new inspiration for her work and in 1929 she began spending part of the year working in New Mexico, which became her permanent home in 1949. There she began to reshape her image into the one we are so familiar with today.

While Georgia O’Keeffe will have its television premiere on Lifetime in September, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum announced that the film will have its “live” premiere in Santa Fe, New Mexico on Friday, August 28, complete with red carpet, strobe lights, and stars! The Lensic Performing Arts Center will be the site of the premiere, and Joan Allen will be on hand to help the Museum celebrate. In addition to attending the film’s opening, Ms. Allen will attend an exclusive cocktail reception at the Museum for high-end ticketholders before the film is shown. Another reception will be held for the rest of the audience after the film.

Last but not least, this exciting evening will also feature (thanks to Sony Pictures Television’s generosity) a silent auction of props and other memorabilia from the movie. The auction will be opened first to ticketholders attending the early reception with Ms. Allen. Among the items available will be ones autographed by the film’s two stars, such as a canvas slip-back from one of the chairs on the movie set and two copies of the film’s script. Other items, all used in the film, will include photographs that were taken of Allen in character as O’Keeffe in the style of Stieglitz; reproductions of O’Keeffe artwork (most of them silkscreened with touches of paint or charcoal to give a realistic feel), a lasso and walking stick, and an animal skull representing the ones that O’Keeffe habitually picked up on the mesa and then painted.

The premiere of Georgia O’Keeffe and the auction of memorabilia from the film promises to lend a welcome touch of glamour to the last dregs of summer, a time when Santa Fe usually finds itself winding down.