SixTwentySix has secured Bryan Farhy to rep the creative studio on the West Coast and Moustache’s Jared Shapiro to handle East Coast representation. Both reps will work with SixTwentySix managing director/co-founder Jake Krask and executive producer/co-founder Austin Barbera. Having launched Stink Films in the U.S. with Daniel Bergmann before becoming West Coast head of sales for RSA, Farhy was also part of the launch team that opened B-Reel Films in America as EP/head of new business. Shapiro founded the NYC-based Moustache nearly two decades ago. SixTwentySix joins a Moustache lineup that includes Supply & Demand, Bob Industries and Independent Media. In the Midwest, SixTwentySix continues to be represented by Sharon & Perry. For music videos, the company is repped by LABUDA…..
Alison Simpson will become president and CEO of the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) effective November 28. Simpson has held executive marketing roles and served as president of several marketing agencies. She has also led brand, digital, loyalty, integrated marketing and customer experience teams for brands including Holt Renfrew, Rogers Communications, and TMX Group. She is currently chief marketing officer and head of consumer business at Key, a technology company that has developed an all-digital, on-demand homeownership platform to make home ownership a reality for many. She is a director of the CNIB Foundation (Ontario + Quebec Regions) and serves on the advisory board for the Master of Management Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Program at the Smith School of Business….
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More