An ongoing commitment
By Robert Goldrich
Ellen Kuras, an accomplished cinematographer spanning features and commercials, has embarked on a new chapter in her career, signing with Park Pictures for her first representation as a spot director.
At press time she was in the process of wrapping her spot helming debut, a Target assignment for Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
While she will be selective, Kuras is committed to directorial pursuits. She isn’t one to take commitment lightly as reflected in her major achievement as a director, Nerakhoon (the Lao word for Betrayal), which earned Oscar and Independent Spirit Award nominations last year for best documentary.
To say that Nerakhoon was a labor of love and represented a deep personal commitment for Kuras is an understatement.
Back in the mid-1980s, she began exploring the prospects of what it means for people to be forced from their homeland and having to find new lives elsewhere. At first this exploration took her to a Laotian woman in New York, the intent being to show how American culture has impacted her.
In order to do justice to this filmmaking quest, Kuras felt the need to learn how to speak Lao, the language of Laos, which in turn led her to a young teacher/translator, Thavisouk (“Thavi”) Phrasavath.
But Kuras got far more than she bargained for when she got to know Phrasavath whose family was forced to emigrate stateside due to the secret U.S. bombing campaign in Laos during the Vietnam War.
The Phrasavaths’ saga is moving, poignant, an intimate love story, a soulful dramatic narrative that blends with documentary to show how a family copes with and somehow perseveres in the face of varied betrayals–personal and sociopolitical, the latter including the communists’ betrayal of the country’s soldiers and a U.S. betrayal relative to denying the bombing.
Over the next some 21 years, Kuras documented the life of Thavi’s family. It was done in piecemeal fashion in that Kuras worked on the project in-between her extensive cinematography duties which have included such features as the Michel Gondry-directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and his Be Kind Rewind, and commercials like the lauded Spike Jonze-directed “Hello Tomorrow” for adidas.
While Kuras directed and shot Nerakhoon, she felt that Phrasavath deserved a co-directorial credit for his contributions, particularly so that people in his home country would know that this is a film which one of their own is presenting as a gift to them.
Nerakhoon made its world premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and was screened several months later at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in New York.
In ’09, Nerakhoon gained the Academy Award and Spirit nominations.
Catalyst, deterrent Paradoxically Nerakhoon served as a dynamic both delaying and spurring on Kuras’ commercial directing career.
On the former score, she had been asked many times over the years about moving into the spot director’s chair. “But I knew that if I launched into directing commercials at that point,” explained Kuras, “I would be hard pressed to return to Nerakhoon. I might not have had time to go back and finish it so I held off.”
On the flip side, the success Nerakhoon has enjoyed affirmed to her that the time was right to start directing more regularly.
“Seeing how the film connected with audiences and being nominated for an Academy Award and a Spirit Award represented some validation for me and the project,” observed Kuras.
“The film moved people in a way both creatively and emotionally so that I felt that I didn’t have to question my inner creative voice as a director. I could go out and be creative as a director on other projects. And what’s great about commercials is that you have other creatives to bounce ideas off of. It’s not as solitary as my feature was for me creatively. I very much look forward to collaborating.”
Wieden+Kennedy certainly didn’t hesitate to collaborate with Kuras as a director. The agency is all too familiar with Kuras, having worked with her as a DP on high-profile projects, including Super Bowl spots for Coke.
For example, Kuras lensed Coca-Cola’s “Sleepwalker” commercial, which debuted during this year’s Super Bowl telecast.
Depicting a man sleepwalking across the African savanna for an ice-cold Coke, the commercial was directed by Garth Davis of Anonymnous Content (who is also profiled in this Diretors Issue).
And back in ’08 for the Super Bowl, Kuras was cinematographer on Coke’s “It’s Mine,” in which Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons–including Underdog and The Family Guy’s Stewie–give chase after a Coca-Cola contour bottle balloon only to have Charlie Brown unexpegtedly rise up and take possession of the coveted refreshment. Indeed Charlie Brown finally won one.
Kuras shot “It’s Mine” for director Nicolai Fuglsig of MJZ.
Now Kuras finds it gratifying to be in the director’s chair for Wieden+Kennedy, starting a new chapter in her career.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More