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RIP: Director John Singleton Dead at 51

John Singleton

John Singleton, the Oscar nominated film director, screenwriter and producer died Monday April 29 in Los Angeles after suffering a stroke on April 17, 2019. Earlier today, Singleton’s family announced he was removed from life support. He was 51.

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Filmmaker Deborah Riley Draper Named Featured Speaker at 2019 Black Women Film Network

Deborah Riley Draper

Award-winning filmmaker and advertising executive Deborah Riley Draper will be the featured speaker at the 2019 Black Women Film Network (BWFN) Summit Welcome Reception and Scholarship Awards hosted by Georgia Power on Thursday, March 7 at 6:30pm. Draper will discuss her career and achievements in a one-on-one conversation moderated by BWFN Scholarship Recipient and E! Networks Sr. Director of Content Strategy Jaunice Sills.

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Film Society of Lincoln Center to Spotlight THE FAVOURITE Director Yorgos Lanthimos with Retrospective

Emma Stone (with director Yorgos Lanthimos) The Favourite

The Film Society of Lincoln Center will spotlight the amazing work of ‘the boldly iconoclastic director’ Yorgos Lanthimos with a five-film retrospective from February 1 to 5.

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Taye Diggs to Host 24th Critics’ Choice Awards

Taye Diggs in “River Runs Red”

Film, television, and stage star Taye Diggs currently starring in the independent film “River Runs Red,” will host the 24th annual Critics’ Choice Awards. The star-studded Critics’ Choice Awards will be broadcast live on The CW Network on Sunday, January 13th, from 7 – 10 p.m. ET (delayed PT).

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Barack Obama Reveals His Favorite Movies of 2018

If Beale Street Could Talk

As he has done each year since 2015, former President Barack Obama released his favorite movies, songs, and books of the year on Facebook and Instagram. Obama’s taste in movies ranges from the popular Black Panther to some very impressive indie films including Eighth Grade, If Beale Street Could Talk, documentary films – Minding the Gap, Won’t You Be My Neighbor; and foreign films – Roma, Shoplifters.

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RIP: Actress Elmarie Wendel ‘Mrs. Dubcek on 3rd Rock From The Sun’ Dead at 89

Actress Elmarie Wendel who played Mrs. Dubcek on the NBC sitcom 3rd Rock From The Sun, has died. She was 89. Elmarie Wendel’s daughter, actress J.C. Wendel, confirmed her death on Instagram, writing “you were a great mom and a badass dame.” https://www.instagram.com/p/BlheeB1gFDH/?utm_source=ig_embed In addition to 3rd Rock From The Sun her acting credits also included the 2011 comedy-drama film A Bag of Hammers directed by Brian Crano that premiered at the SXSW Film Festival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2fq-saH1FE
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RIP: Claude Lanzmann Director of Holocaust Documentary SHOAH Dead at 92

French film-maker and journalist Claude Lanzmann, best known for directing the Holocaust documentary Shoah, died today in Paris, he was 92. His first documentary Pourquoi Israel? (Why Israel?) was released in 1973, and he began filming Shoah, a year later in 1974, conducting a series of filmed interview with death camp survivors all over the world. Lanzmann was reportedly attacked while attempting a covert interview, and was hospitalized for a month. Over nine hours long and 11 years in the making, Shoah presents Lanzmann’s interviews with survivors, witnesses and perpetrators during visits to German Holocaust sites across Poland, including extermination camps. Released in Paris in April 1985, Shoah won critical acclaim and many prestigous awards, including the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Non-Fiction Film in 1985, a special citation at the 1985 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, and the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary in 1986. That year it also won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Non-Fiction Film and Best Documentary at the International Documentary Association. Lanzmann has released four feature-length films based on unused material shot for Shoah. A Visitor from the Living (fr) (1997) about a Red Cross representative, Maurice Rossel, who in 1944 wrote a favourable report about the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m. (2001) about Yehuda Lerner, who participated in an uprising against the camp guards and managed to escape. The Karski Report (fr) (2010) about Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski’s visit to Franklin Roosevelt in 1943. The Last of the Unjust (2013) about Benjamin Murmelstein, a controversial Jewish rabbi in the Theresienstadt ghetto during World War II. Previously unseen Shoah outtakes have also been featured in Adam Benzine’s HBO documentary Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah (2015), which examines Lanzmann’s life during 1973–1985, the years he spent making Shoah. Lanzmann’s final film, Napalm, which premiered at Cannes in 2017, drew on his earlier visits to North Korea as a young journalist, in which he revealed his brief affair with a North Korean nurse. Claude Lanzmann received a Honorary Golden Bear at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival, and was made Grand Officer of the National Order of the Legion of Honor on July 14, 2011. Update: Berlinale issued a statement French director and author Claude Lanzmann has passed away. “Claude Lanzmann was one of the great documentarists. With his depictions of inhumanity and violence, of anti-Semitism and its consequences, he created a new kind of cinematic and ethical exploration. We mourn the loss of an important personality of the political-intellectual life of our time,” says Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick. Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah (1985) made cinematic history as an unparalleled masterpiece of commemorative culture. The nine-and-a-halfhour documentary on the genocide of European Jews was screened in the Berlinale Forum in 1986 and received numerous international awards. Born in Paris in 1925 to Jewish parents, Claude Lanzmann fought in the Résistance, studied philosophy in France and Germany, and held a lectureship at the then newly founded Freie Universität Berlin in 1948/49. His exploration of the Shoah, anti-Semitism and political struggles for freedom infuse both his cinematic and journalistic work. His first film was made in 1972, the documentary Pourquoi Israël (Israel, Why; France 1973), in which he illustrates the necessity of Israel’s founding from the Jewish perspective. In the film Tsahal, which screened in the 1995 Berlinale Forum, he focuses on women and men who serve in the Israeli Army. Sobibor, 14 octobre 1943, 16 heures (France 2001), about the 1943 revolt in the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, was also screened in the Berlinale Forum, in 2002. In 2013, the Berlinale honoured him with an Homage and awarded the Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIV7SYk9mWk
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Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick to Receive Sam Spiegel Intl Film Lab 1st Force-of-Nature Filmmaking Award

[caption id="attachment_30614" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Dieter Kosslick[/caption] The Sam Spiegel International Film Lab (Son of Saul, The Kindergarten Teacher, Red Cow) will present the first Force-of-Nature Filmmaking Award to longtime Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick. The Sam Spiegel International Film Lab in Jerusalem is a program to promote filmmakers’ projects launched by the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School in 2011. The new Force-of-Nature Filmmaking Award is conceived to honor extraordinary personalities committed to the development of world cinema. Dieter Kosslick will be presented with the Force-of-Nature Filmmaking Award in Jerusalem on July 6, 2018. “A particular concern of mine has always been the national and international promotion and funding of talent and up-and-coming filmmakers. I’m exceedingly pleased to receive this award,” said Dieter Kosslick.
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Filmmaker and Graphic Designer Kyle Cooper to be Honored at Locarno Film Festival

Filmmaker and graphic designer Kyle Cooper will receive the Vision Award Ticinomoda, dedicated to those who have used their talents to create new perspectives in the world of cinema at the upcoming 71st Locarno Festival. Kyle Cooper will be a guest in Piazza Grande on Sunday August 5, and the tribute will be accompanied by a screening of the film Se7en. Born in 1962 in Salem, Massachusetts, Kyle Cooper is one of the most original and innovative film title designers in world cinema. Known to the mainstream public for the opening sequence he created for the film Se7en (1995), directed by David Fincher, Cooper has given fresh impetus to the art of movie titling. Over the three decades of his career to date he has directed and produced over 350 titles sequences, working with some of the highest profile filmmakers in global cinema. After studying graphic design at the Yale School of Art and under the guidance of noted U.S. designer Paul Rand, he named and co-founded one of Hollywood’s most successful creative agencies: Imaginary Forces. His career as director and graphic designer took off with the title sequence for Se7en (1995), a milestone which the New York Times Magazine hailed as “one of the most important design innovations of the 1990s”. Cooper experimented with kinetic typography, reprising the work of Saul Bass and attuning lettering and other elements to each single movie, as with the hieroglyphs of The Mummy (1999) or the cobweb typography of the first Spider-Man movie (2002). He came up with an astonishing range of techniques to capture viewers’ attention during the opening minutes, immersing them in the atmosphere of the film from the very outset. The range of films and genres on which he worked was equally broad: Braveheart (1995), Donnie Brasco (1997), Across the Universe (2007), The New World (2005), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Final Destination 5 (2011), Black Mass (2015), Argo (2012), Mission Impossible (1996), Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013), Mother! (2017). He also worked for television, with The Walking Dead (2010), American Horror Story (2011), Scream Queens (2015), Limitless (2015), Feud (2017), and lastly for video games, in such as Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001), Scarface: The World Is Yours (2006), Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) and Death Stranding (upcoming). He worked also on brand designing brands such as SU2C and Marvel logo animation. In 2003 he left Imaginary Forces and set up the creative agency Prologue Films. In 2008 he was a finalist at the National Design Awards. He has earned five nominations for the Emmy Awards. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and he also holds the title of Royal Designer for Industry from the Royal Society of Arts in London. Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director of the Locarno Festival: “Kyle Cooper is an artist who has single-handedly changed the visual impact of contemporary cinema. His hundreds of creations have been gateways to iconic movies loved by millions of viewers. His title sequences combine experimentation and graphic research, CGI (computer-generated imagery) and details borrowed from often invisible microcosms, breaking down the barriers between auteur and mainstream, crafting and industry. The award is both a mark of our recognition of the significance of his work and an invitation to reassess the role and value of these short films within films.” Kyle Cooper will receive the Vision Award Ticinomoda in Piazza Grande on the evening of August 5. On the following day, Monday August 6, he will hold a master class. The tribute will also be accompanied by screenings of a selection of films reflecting his career. In recent years the Locarno Festival has given the Vision Award, introduced in 2013, to Douglas Trumbull (2013), Garrett Brown (2014), Walter Murch (2015), Howard Shore (2016) and José Luis Alcaine (2017). The 71st Locarno Festival will take place from August 1 to 11, 2018. https://vimeo.com/9400332
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Meet SORRY TO BOTHER YOU’s Writer and Director Boots Riley [Video]

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU written and directed by Boots Riley opens in select theaters on Friday, July 6th and everywhere July 13th. The film features an all star cast including Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Armie Hammer, Terry Crews, Steven Yeun, Omari Hardwick, Jermaine Fowler, and Danny Glover. What is the film about? In an alternate present-day version of Oakland, telemarketer Cassius Green discovers a magical key to professional success, propelling him into a macabre universe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enH3xA4mYcY Now get to know SORRY TO BOTHER YOU’S writer and director Boots Riley before the film debuts in theaters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hesissxRP8
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Rose McGowan: We need to have a conversation about suicide. Blame is not that conversation.

Rose McGowan today released a very important timely message, in the wake of the recent suicides, including that of Anthony Bourdain, who was in a relationship with her close pal Asia Argento. If you are considering suicide, please find information below. Sitting across from me is the remarkable human and brave survivor, Asia Argento, who has been through more than most could stand, and yet stand she does. She stood up to her monster rapist and now she has to stand up to yet another monster, suicide. The suicide of her beloved lover and ally, Anthony Bourdain. I write these truths because I have been asked to. I know so many around the world thought of Anthony Bourdain as a friend and when a friend dies, it hurts. Many of these people who lost their ‘friend’ are wanting to lash out and blame. You must not sink to that level. Suicide is a horrible choice, but it is that person’s choice. When Anthony met Asia, it was instant chemistry. They laughed, they loved and he was her rock during the hardships of this last year. Anthony was open with his demons, he even wrote a book about them. In the beginning of their relationship, Anthony told a mutual friend, “He’s never met anyone who wanted to die more than him.” And through a lot of this last year, Asia did want the pain to stop. But here’s the thing, over their time together, thankfully, she did the work to get help, so she could stay alive and live another day for her and her children. Anthony’s depression didn’t let him, he put down his armor, and that was very much his choice. His decision, not hers. His depression won. Anthony and Asia had a free relationship, they loved without borders of traditional relationships, and they established the parameters of their relationship early on. Asia is a free bird, and so was Anthony. Was. Such a terrible word to write. I’ve heard from many that the past two years they were together were some of his happiest and that should give us all solace. Anthony was 61, the same age my father was when he died. My father also suffered from intermittent deep depression, and like Anthony, was part of a “pull up your bootstraps and march on” generation. The a “strong man doesn’t ask for help” generation. I know before Anthony died he reached out for help, and yet he did not take the doctor’s advice. And that has led us here, to this tragedy, to this loss, to this world of hurt. Do NOT do the sexist thing and burn a woman on the pyre of misplaced blame. Anthony’s internal war was his war, but now she’s been left on the battlefield to take the bullets. It is in no way fair or acceptable to blame her or anyone else, not even Anthony. We are asking you to be better, to look deeper, to read and learn about mental illness, suicide and depression before you make it worse for survivors by judging that which we do not understand, that which can never fully be understood. Sometimes we are stuck in the unknowable, and that is where we are now, a massive wave of darkness that threatens to swallow everyone in its wake. As I watch Asia do her job on set today, I see a pillar of strength who continues to work to put food on her children’s table. I see Elizabeth Taylor carrying on filming Cat on a Hot Tin Roof despite her love, her husband, dying in a plane crash. I see all of us who have carried on. Please join me in sending healing energy to Anthony on his journey, and to all who’ve been left behind to journey on without him. There is no one to blame but the stigma of loneliness, the stigma of asking for help, the stigma of mental illness, the stigma of being famous and hurting. We must do more and be better. Anthony, our friend, would want it that way. To the media and to the random commenter, Anthony would never have wanted Asia to be hurt, I’d like to think he would want us to have the collective conversation that needs to be had about depression. Blame is NOT a conversation, it is the shutting down of our collective growth. Which is where we are now. We have a choice as humans, shrink to our smaller, uglier selves, or be better and grow as only true Phoenixes can. I urge you to be that Phoenix. With great sadness and even greater hope, I remain, Rose McGowan cc: Asia Argento If you are considering suicide, reach out. We need you here. You matter. You exist. You count. There is help a phone call away, reach out. Suicide Prevention Hotlines: Argentina: +5402234930430 Australia: 131114 Austria: 017133374 Belgium: 106 Bosnia & Herzegovina: 080 05 03 05 Botswana: 3911270 Brazil: 212339191 Canada: 5147234000 (Montreal); 18662773553 (outside Montreal) Croatia: 014833888 Denmark: +4570201201 Egypt: 7621602 Finland: 010 195 202 France: 0145394000 Germany: 08001810771 Holland: 09000767 Hong Kong: +852 2382 0000 Hungary: 116123 India: 8888817666 Ireland: +4408457909090 Israel: 1201 or 972-889-1333 from abroad Italy: 800860022 Japan: +810352869090 Mexico: 5255102550 New Zealand: 045861048 Norway: +4781533300 Pakistan: 15 / 115 (Emergency) Philippines: 028969191 Poland: 5270000 Russia: 0078202577577 Spain: 914590050 South Africa: 0514445691 Sweden: 46317112400 Switzerland: 143 United Kingdom: 08457909090 USA: 18002738255 For a USA Crisis Text Line, please text CONNECT to 741741 from anywhere in the USA, anytime, about any type of crisis.
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RIP: First ‘Bond Girl’ Eunice Gayson Dies at 90

Eunice Gayson, the very first ‘Bond girl’ who played Sylvia Trench in Dr. No and From Russia With Love died on Friday, June 8. She was 90. The news was tweeted by the official James Bond account. https://twitter.com/007/status/1005441780995837952 https://twitter.com/EuniceGayson/status/1005404262480990208 Originally, Eunice Gayson was to be cast as Miss Moneypenny, but that part went to Lois Maxwell instead. She was the first official Bond girl. Gayson also played a major role in the Hammer horror film The Revenge of Frankenstein.
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