Who we are

Associated Publicity was founded by Tim Buckwalter, a media strategist specializing in campaigns for films, film festivals, and awards.

For more than two decades, Tim was a lead publicist at Larsen Associates, where he developed and executed Bay Area publicity campaigns for numerous Academy Award–winning and nominated films, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Lives of Others, Navalny, 20 Days in Mariupol, The Last Repair Shop, and Mr. Nobody Against Putin.

His first major success came in 1996, when he worked with filmmaker Jessica Yu on the campaign for the Oscar-winning short documentary Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien.

Recent campaigns include Cutting Through Rocks, The Alabama Solution, Come See Me in the Good Light, and The Voice of Hind Rajab.

Tim has also led media and event strategies for many of the Bay Area’s top film festivals, including CAAMFest, Frameline, IndieFest, DocFest, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the Mill Valley Film Festival, and the San Francisco Film Preserve’s new Re:Vision series.

Before founding Associated Publicity, Tim worked across journalism, media, marketing, and fine art. His experience includes serving as an arts writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, a social media advisor to a West Coast foundation, a researcher for the California State Library, and a senior publicist and marketer for a New American Media/ Pacific News Service.

Among his proudest professional accomplishments was spearheading the campaign that helped bring painter Marlon Mullen into the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial and SFMOMA’s SECA Award exhibitions. Marlon was the first artist with a developmental disability to be included in both.

Tim is a graduate of Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture. At Temple, he studied film theory with Ruth Perlmutter, a writer, critic, and founder of the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival, and performance art with actor Annie Sprinkle. He began his career in the public relations office of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, answering questions from the public about the museum’s holdings (yes, including the Rocky statue.)

Trista Ngo, lead publicist, has been at Associated Publicity since it began.