Production company Love Song has signed director and photographer Camille Summers-Valli. Born in Bangkok, raised in Nepal, and now based in Paris, French-Australian Summers-Valli has worked across film genres, ranging from commercials and music videos, to high-end fashion shorts, art films, and award-winning editorial for The New York Times.
After studying Video Art in London at Central St Martins, Summers-Valli began working as a filmmaker and fashion photographer. Since then, her aptitude for dynamic visual storytelling has earned Summers-Valli an impressive list of legacy brand clients, including Nike, Adidas, Chanel, Burberry, Gucci, Versace, Hermes, and Jean Paul Gaultier. Her work has also been featured in editorial magazines such as Vogue, Dazed, and more.
Inspired by her love for art and nature, Summers-Valli’s films are visually stimulating and boundary-pushing. In 2022, the short film “The Truth Takes a Journalist,” directed by Summers-Valli for The New York Times, won D&AD Pencils for Art Direction and Editing. Colorful, rich, and kinetic, the film depicts the complex, hopeful, turbulent, and rewarding lives of the reporters who make the daily newspaper and celebrates their humanity. The same year, “Body Language,” directed by Summers-Valli for Vogue, won a Silver award for Fashion Film at the Ciclope Festival. In the film, Summers-Valli explores the winding, bewildering, and often bumpy road of body acceptance within the fashion industry.
Prior to joining Love Song, Summers-Valli was repped by production house Somesuch.
“Camille is a thoughtful storyteller and artist whose work is beyond intriguing, with a clear understanding of how to draw emotional subtleties from talent so even in the most fashion forward piece, there is a beautiful emotional thread and she makes you FEEL,” said Kelly Bayett who founded Love Song with director Daniel Wolfe. “I loved the work, but once I met her I was so captivated by who she is, her incredibly rich personal history and her openness and compassion which is all so evident in her work. We’re ecstatic for her to join our roster of brilliant collaborative storytellers and create impactful work that keeps people talking.”
“I’m really excited by the culture Kelly and Daniel have built at Love Song,” said Summers-Valli. “Feels like a healthy, collaborative and much needed development in the short form film world, and I’m thrilled to grow my work with them as my allies.”
Independent Cinemas In L.A. Are Finding Their Audience
On a hot summer evening, Miles Villalon lined up outside the New Beverly Cinema, hours before showtime.
The 36-year-old already had tickets to the Watergate-themed double feature of 1976's "All the President's Men" and 1999's "Dick." But Villalon braved Los Angeles' infamous rush-hour traffic to snag front-row seats at Quentin Tarantino's historic theater.
This level of dedication is routine for the Starbucks barista and aspiring filmmaker, who typically sees up to six movies a week in theaters, and almost exclusively in independently owned theaters in and around Los Angeles.
"I always say it feels like church," he said. "When I go to AMC, I just sit there. And I can't really experience that communal thing that we have here, where we're all just worshipping at the altar of celluloid."
Streaming — and a pandemic — have radically transformed cinema consumption, but Villalon is part of a growing number of mostly younger people contributing to a renaissance of LA's independent theater scene. The city's enduring, if diminished, role as a mecca of the film industry still shapes its residents and their entertainment preferences, often with renewed appreciation after the pandemic.
A revival in the City of Angels
Part of what makes the city unique is its abundance of historic theaters, salvaged amid looming closures or resurrected in recent years by those with ties to the film industry. Experts see a pattern of success for a certain kind of theater experience in Los Angeles.
Kate Markham, the managing director at Art House Convergence, a coalition of independent cinema exhibitors, said a key factor is the people who run these theaters.
"They know their audiences or their potential audiences, and... Read More