Avid® and the customer-led Avid Community Association (ACA) debuted the Avid Learning Collective program to gift professional media creation technologies, training and certification to not-for-profit educational organizations that have proven to inspire, engage and activate creators in underrepresented communities. Avid and the ACA also introduced the six inaugural award recipients, identified for their outstanding missions and achievements: Boston Arts Academy, Ghetto Film School, Girls Make Beats, Immersive & Inclusive Audio Institute, MAMA Youth Project and The Last Mile.
Each year, the Avid Learning Collective will welcome six additional educational organizations and initiatives that demonstrate the intention and ability to influence the current state of DEI through student advancement. For three years, recipients will enjoy membership in the global Avid Learning Partner program, which brings licenses for Avid creative tools, teacher training and course materials for students as well as peer and professional networking to cultivate visibility, mentoring and job opportunities for students.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
The one rule to follow is that... Read More