Award-winning director Diane Paragas has joined Accomplice Media for exclusive representation in commercials. Paragas’s work spans commercials, documentaries, narrative films and branded content with much of it rooted in the stories of real people. On the advertising side, she has directed campaigns for American Airlines, the New York State Department of Health, Care.com and Proust.com, the latter a First Place winner in Google’s TV for All Contest. Her documentary work includes Brooklyn Boheme, a 2012 feature-length documentary for Showtime that she made in tandem with writer and critic Nelson George.
“Diane is an exceptionally talented filmmaker with a gift for telling stories in an insightful and powerful way,” says Accomplice Media executive producer Mel Gragido. “She brings unique skills and a creative vision that, we believe, will resonate with a lot of brands.”
Paragas was born in Minneapolis but was repatriated to the Philippines when she was a year old. She returned to the U.S. at age four and spent the rest of her youth in Lubbock, Texas, where she studied painting, music and film. She began her career as a producer with boutique ad agency LLT. She later joined MTV and helped to launch MTV Asia, and also worked for Discovery Asia. It was there that she began to focus on documentary filmmaking.
Paragas’s films have appeared on BET, Discovery, MTV, Bravo and PBS. Brooklyn Boheme, which premiered on Showtime in February 2012, celebrated the Afro-American arts renaissance centered in Fort Greene Brooklyn and featured Spike Lee, Chris Rock, Rosie Perez and Saul Williams, among many others. While working on that film, Paragas was contracted by Burrell Advertising to direct, shoot and edit a web-based travel series for American Airlines. That series, which also featured Nelson George as well as actor Laz Alonso and recording artists Laura Izibor and John Legend, eventually spanned three seasons and some 30 cities worldwide, including Beijing, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro and Paris.
“We were writing and directing on the fly,” Paragas recalls. “By the third season, people were telling us where to go, so it became very interactive. It’s a different kind of advertising—the agency took its entire ad budget and made a web series. That’s where I believe advertising is moving, more value-added content.”
For Proust.com, an online community that allows users to build family histories, Paragas wrote, produced and directed 14 spots in which people relate deeply personal stories about themselves and their relatives. Paragas elevated the work above simple testimonials both by getting her subjects to open up and by using personal photographs to place them in stylized environments.
“I wanted it to have the feel of a family album come to life; it’s meant to appear very handmade, antique,” she explains. “My aim is to bring real people spots into the realm of cinema, to make them more stylized, more artistic. I believe that is a message that every brand could use.”
Paragas’s most recent work is an inspiring documentary commercial for CoverGirl focusing on an empowerment camp for teenage girls promoting leadership and beauty from within.
Currently, Paragas is developing a narrative feature film, Yellow Rose, about an Asian-American woman pursuing a dream to become a country music star. She is also working to establish a charitable foundation to support the work of Asian-American filmmakers. “To me, commercials, documentaries and narrative films are all about storytelling,” she says. “I don’t distinguish between them. Whether I’m working with a big crew, a small crew or by myself, it’s all storytelling.”
For more information, visit www.accomplice-media.com.
Contact:Mel Gragido Executive Producer Accomplice Media 310.893.1147 Contact Mel via email
Contact:Jeff Snyder Executive Producer Accomplice Media 310.893.1147 Contact Jeff via email
“ฦvolution” Comes Full Circle At The Chelsea Film Festival
The Chelsea Film Festival, running from October 16th through October 20th, 2024, at Regal Cinemas here in Union Square, is set to host the East Coast premiere of ฦvolution, a thought-provoking experimental micro-short film that proves big ideas can come in small packages and in perfect circles.
In just 1 minute 16 seconds, this cinematic gem by Award-Winning Director Romina Schwedler, with original music by Argentine Composer Ignacio Montoya Carlotto, explores a cycle as old as time: life leads to progress, progress leads to destruction, and destruction, well, leads back to life. But is this vicious circle unbreakable? ฦvolutionย suggests the answer is yes, unless we decide to open our eyes.
Inspired by the overwhelming number of recent events that threaten human existence,ย ฦvolution, possibly the shortest film in this 12th edition of the festival, plays out entirely through the symbolism of circles, cleverly illustrating โin the blink of an eyeโ the repeating patterns of history, and confronting viewers with the uncomfortable truth that our so-called โprogressโ may, in fact, be guiding us to our own ruin.Premiering at the Regal 14 Union Square, New York City, on October 18, 2024, at 11 a.m., Romina Schwedler's micro-short, featuring Leah Young with cinematography by Alan J. Carmona, will be sure to spark conversations longer than the film itself! Forcing viewers to reconsider the true meaning of evolution, not just as a biological process, but as a reflection of our collective journey as humans.
With a string of festival appearances across the globe, including CineGlobe at CERN (Switzerland/France), Oscarยฎ... Read More