Wellspring Media

A company that supported a wide range of international cinema as well as gay-themed and other “transgressive” titles. Movies acquired and released under his tenure include the experimental Lgbt documentary “Tarnation” and “Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry,” a pro-Kerry documentary that opened during the 2004 election. This placed Bannon at the head of a respected independent film distribution company at crucial moment in its history. The company had filed for bankruptcy at the end of the ’90s; by 2004, it was on the brink of being shut down. That was when American Vantage, with Bannon at its helm, took over. Announcing the deal, Bannon said, “We will create shareholder value through the support of artists doing great work.” The brief period in which Bannon explored the prospects of independent film distribution reflects an opportunism rampant among Wall Street executives at the time. The same year as the Wellspring acquisition, American Vantage also acquired Hypnotic, a production company co-founded by director Doug Liman. Wellspring library’s 1,000 titles became a far greater asset than its capacity for theatrical releases. These included everything from “The 400 Blows” and “Breathless” to “The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant” as well as “enlightening health and wellness programming” that included Joseph Campbell’s “The Power of Myth” and titles featuring the work of Deepak Chopra, Dr. Andrew Weill, and Alan Watts. Soon, Bannon had a new job: running Genius, which TWC acquired in December 2005 for $16 million as its home entertainment arm. Even as Bannon ran Wellspring, he developed a side career directing conservative-leaning documentaries, starting with the celebratory 2004 Ronald Reagan portrait, “In the Face of Evil: Reagan’s War in Word and Deed.” Since then he’s directed eight more films, including the Sarah Palin hagiography “Undefeated” (2011), “Occupy Unmasked” (2012), and his most recent, “Torchbearer” (2016), in which “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson argues that life is absurd without God.