By Robert Goldrich

Daniel Junge and Kief Davidson—two filmmakers with track records at Tribeca, and the uncommon bond of relatively recent Oscar recognition—have teamed for the first time to co-direct the feature-length Beyond the Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary, which will make its world premiere on Sunday, April 20, at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. The fest began just a couple of days ago (4/16) and runs through April 27 in NYC.

Junge, who won the Short Subject Documentary Oscar in 2012 for Saving Face (co-directed with Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy), and Davidson, whose Open Heart earned a Short Subject Documentary Academy Award nomination in 2013, have been friends for awhile, originally meeting on the film festival circuit.

Junge helped conceive the LEGO documentary, pitched it to LEGO in order to gain access to the company and its creative engineers but soon found out that the project was too much for a filmmaker to take on solo. He reached out to Davidson who found the proposition appealing.

“It’s a film really about the astonishing impact of the LEGO brick and the innovative uses for it,” observed Davidson. “The world has been inspired to create with this iconic toy. In many cases, it’s given people meaning, a forum to express themselves and in some instances has changed their lives for the better. It’s a creative tool, a therapeutic tool, and the documentary is very much a movie about creativity. There are moments when the audiences will laugh a lot and times when they’ll be emotionally touched. The types of films Daniel and I have done in the past capture a wide range of emotion—and we were able to tap into that for this LEGO documentary.”

Davidson noted, “We went the other way on this one,” a reference to Beyond the Brick being a lighter-hearted departure from some of the more serious subject matter he and Junge have separately tackled in the past.

For example, Junge’s Saving Face introduced us to Dr. Mohammad Jawad who returns to his Pakistan homeland to help victims of acid burns. We see the women who are recovering and reclaiming their lives, and another woman who fights to see that the perpetrators of this crime—often husbands and boyfriends of the attack victims—are brought to justice. Meanwhile Davidson’s Open Heart centered on eight Rwandan children who make a life-or-death journey to Sudan to have high-risk heart surgery performed at The Salam Centre, Africa’s only hospital offering free cardiac procedures for families in need.

Still, there is a special brand of substance–albeit not life or death–to the LEGO documentary which was produced by production house HeLo with independent financing coming through private equity sources. LEGO provided no financial backing for the project but offered unprecedented access to company resources. “We shot in their design room, filmed their designers, saw some of their bigger projects throughout the world and had access to their archive,” said Junge. “We were able to look inside the LEGO company and their process. But ultimately this is a film about the LEGO community and the creativity this so-called toy has inspired for many.”

The LEGO documentary entailed shooting in such places as Shanghai, Taiwan, Denmark, Berlin, the Czech Republic, New Zealand and at LEGO conventions in Chicago, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
“Daniel and I split off to take on different aspects of this documentary. We were only together my first day of shooting,” recalled Davidson. “We talked about the look, established the look and then we were off and running our separate ways. There were many phone calls and emails going back and forth between us as we discussed lots of potential characters and storylines. It was quite unique to have two directors working on the same project, out on their own at different locales but having a shared vision.”

Junge and Davidson also maintain spotmaking/branded content affiliations; Junge’s roost being HeLo, and Davidson on the directorial roster at B-Reel.

As alluded to earlier, Tribeca represents a bit of a homecoming for both Junge and Davidson. The former’s first feature film, Chiefs—which told the story of a Native American basketball team—earned Best Documentary distinction at the Tribeca Fest in 2002. And Junge’s short titled We Are Phamaly, about a disabled actors’ group, played at Tribeca in 2004.

Davidson’s first feature also was shown at Tribeca. Titled The Devil’s Miner—which he and Richard Ladkani directed—the film tells the story of 14-year-old Basilio who worships the devil for protection while working in a Bolivian silver mine to support his family. The Devil’s Miner received the Best New Documentary Filmmaker—Special Jury Mention honor at Tribeca in 2005. Then the 2008 feature documentary Kassim the Dream—written and directed by Davidson, and which centers on a former child soldier who grows up to be a boxing champion—was selected for Tribeca.

“Daniel and I both sort of launched our careers at Tribeca,” said Davidson. “It’s great to now be coming back.”

Jessica Yu
Oscar-winning documentarian Jessica Yu, thrice nominated for the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize, is no stranger to the awards show and festival circuit over the years but Misconception marks her first film at the Tribeca Fest.

The feature documentary looks at concerns—and how true they are—that the growing population is straining the Earth’s resources. Taking cues from statistics guru Hans Rosling, the film offers a provocative glimpse at how the world, and women in particular, are tackling a subject that is both personal and global.

Yu said she’s excited to have Misconception make its world premiere at Tribeca. “To have this film about a global issue debut at a big urban center where the United Nations is headquartered seems fitting. We even did some filming at the UN. In the past, the timing was just never right for Tribeca in terms of when my films were ready. Thankfully, the timing worked this time around. We’ve seen Tribeca grow in prominence every year.”

Based on their feature documentary about the global water crisis—Last Call at the Oasis, nominated in 2012 for the Earth Grand Prix at the Tokyo International Film Festival—director Yu and producer Elise Pearlstein began to think about other big picture environmental issues, providing the impetus for Misconception. While the all encompassing subject matter centers on world population and resources, Yu took a personal storytelling approach, focusing on three people’s lives—one for example being a boy in China who grows to marrying age and cannot seem to find a wife.

“We look at unintended consequences of government policy on an individual [in this case, the impact of China’s population control mandate],” related Yu. “Rather than looking just at big numbers, we focus on a man determined to find a wife before he turns 30. This part of the film is a portrait of one man’s family and a glimpse into modern China.”

Yu observed, “I want you to get so deeply involved in the stories of the people we cover that you almost forget the overall issue we’re addressing. Then you come back with a different perspective and can ask your own questions about the bigger issues involved.”

Misconception entailed filming in eight countries with nine cameras out and about capturing varied aspects of people’s lives and their cultures. Yu’s acumen in human-based filmmaking is also reflected in her shorter form fare, perhaps the most notable being Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien which won the Best Short Subject Documentary Oscar in 1997.

Yu’s short fare also includes commercials and branded content which she directs via Nonfiction Unlimited. Among director Yu’s ad credits are Ford’s “Switch” campaign consisting of 19 broadcast and web spots, and GE’s “Hands,” part of its Focus Forward series of short films about innovation.

Besides Last Call at the Oasis and Misconception, Yu’s feature documentaries include Protagonist, In the Realms of the Unreal  and The Living Museum, all nominated over the years for the Sundance Grand Jury Documentary Prize.

Steve James
Nonfiction Unlimited is also the spotmaking/branded content roost for director Steve James, a DGA Award winner for the documentary Hoop Dreams (which also earned him an Oscar nomination as an editor). James is best known for his feature-length documentaries such as The Interruptors, Stevie, Real Paradise and Life Itself. The latter debuted at Sundance this year and is based on the memoirs of movie critic Roger Ebert.

However, James has also made forays into shorts, the latest being A Place Called Pluto which is making its world premiere at Tribeca. The film introduces us to Greg O’Brien, a veteran Cape Cod reporter and newspaperman who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, decides to confront the disease and his decline by writing candidly about his experiences. For the past couple of years he’s been working on a memoir titled “Beyond Pluto.”

James was invited to participate in the project by David Shenk, author of “The Forgetting,” a book about Alzheimer’s. Shenk secured funding from MetLife to do a collection of four short films focusing on Alzheimer’s. He recruited James to direct one of those shorts.

“As a whole, the series shows some hopefulness—the way people are coping with Alzheimer’s. They’re not giving up,” said James. “I wanted to find someone early enough in the disease who very much had symptoms but was very much aware of what he was dealing with and could express what he was going through and willing to speak to that. It’s fairly rare to find someone with early onset Alzheimer’s who will be open about it. People in this situation usually do their best to hide it personally and professionally. But Greg is a journalist and saw the importance of being candid and open. His mother and grandfather died with Alzheimer’s.”

James added that he enjoys the short film discipline. “It requires you to tell a story that feels complete in some sense but in a very few minutes. I feel good about this short [A Place Called Pluto] in that regard.

This could easily be a much longer film but it works as is. There’s a level of distillation and economy that I don’t normally have to do.”

Helping James to work effectively in such an “economy” has been his ad project experience at Nonfiction. “Webisodes I’ve done in the advertising world in part whetted my appetite to work more on smaller films.” James’ work at Nonfiction includes a dozen shorts for Ford Trucks and most recently a web short for Google featuring a young, aspiring filmmaker from Haiti who connects with the Ghetto Film School in the Bronx. Via a Google Hangout where groups can have video meetings, she plugs into a Ghetto Film Master Class featuring director Lee Daniels (Precious and Lee Daniels’ The Butler). James went to Haiti to capture the young director’s story.

A Place Called Pluto is the second film James has brought to Tribeca and his first at the fest as a director. In 2006, The War Tapes—which he produced and edited—won the Feature Documentary Prize at Tribeca. For The War Tapes, cameras were put in the hands of soldiers in Iraq who documented their own deployment, with James shaping a feature from the footage.

As for what’s next, director James has embarked on another feature-length documentary: Generation Food inspired by writer Raj Patel, an expert on the connected issues of food and politics. “This is a film trying to look at the economics of food, and the realities and impact that all this has on what we eat and the people who grow our food,” said James. Generation Food will explore various alternatives to fixing a broken food system.

Josh Soskin
For Josh Soskin, having his short film La Carnada—which he wrote and directed—selected for Tribeca is gratifying, particularly as part of the festival’s Flight Delays narrative program which features just seven shorts, including the Anders Walter-directed Helium, this year’s Live Action Short Film Oscar winner.
La Carnada follows 13-year-old Manny from Tijuana as he goes on his first drug smuggle across the “Devil’s Highway,” a notoriously fatal stretch of desert on the Arizona/Mexico border.

La Carnada is director Soskin’s third short, the other two being Milk Run and Moving Takahashi. Unlike its two predecessors, La Carnada was also conceived and written by Soskin whose penchant for authenticity is underscored by his extensive researching of drug smuggling, which has become more prevalent among teens in Mexico, and by his decision to shoot in Tijuana and the smuggling hotbeds of the Sonora desert.

The original impetus for Soskin to make La Carnada was to have it serve as a prequel to his feature-length script Smuggler. In terms of genre, Smuggler is a departure from Soskin’s first two shorts so he thought La Carnada could better position him to get the funding and support needed to make Smuggler a reality.

Soskin said that the short sparked “a really dramatic rewrite of my feature. Smuggling is a violent, bloody world but is filled with human beings who have relationships—in this case between a man and a teenager, making for an almost paternal relationship in a criminal world.”

Further informing his short and hopefully soon-to-be feature filmmaking, noted Soskin, has been his even shorter form experience. Soskin is handled for commercials and branded content by Station Film, with credits over the past year including spots for IBM out of Ogilvy NY and Ford Expedition for Team Detroit. He has also separately maintained an ongoing relationship with Starbucks, directing web spots. Earlier Soskin helmed Starbucks’ Journey, an in-store and online promotional short showing the journey of coffee beans from the field to the brew.

Soskin made his first ad industry mark with three spec commercials that all went on to gain in-competition/festival recognition: Chevy Volt’s “Zombie Ride,” an apocalyptic piece which won a spec honor at a Barcelona festival and went on to be picked up by GM for Eureopean release; Glacier Vitamin Water’s “Treasure” which was showcased at the Cannes Ad Fest; and Microsoft’s “Detention, a MOFILM/Microsoft competition winner at Tribeca.

Now he formally comes into Tribeca  with La Carnada, a narrative short which is shaped in part by his documentary sensibilities. Soskin cut his teeth making documentaries at Current TV. He also made an initial mark in the documentary discipline with his short Modern Day Pirates.

Lucas Spaulding
Best known as an editor, Lucas Spaulding, who cuts spots and branded fare at Whitehouse Post, makes his formal directorial debut with Sequestered, a short selected to be part of Tribeca’s Soul Survivors narrative program. In addition to directing, Spaulding wrote and edited Sequestered which introduces us to two hapless bank robbers who run into problems when each takes exception to the other’s mask. The comedy-driven piece also has elements of social significance. “Entertaining people is the prime goal but there’s a little bit of substance to the story as well,” he shared.

For Sequestered, Spaulding recruited colleagues he’s collaborated with and respected over the years on spots and features. A few years ago, for example, Spaulding cut a feature in which Seamus Dever performed. Spaulding sought out Dever who brought in fellow actor Jon Huertas (the two portray homicide detectives in the TV series Castle). “They know about cops and guns based on their work in Castle,” said Spaulding. “They brought a lot to the table.” Huertas and Dever play the two bank robbers in Sequestered.

Similarly, Spaulding had cut a spot directed by Rocky Morton of MJZ and shot by DP Kris Kachikis. Spaulding struck up a rapport with the cinematographer who in turn agreed to lens Sequestered.
Producing Sequestered was Joshua Herbstman of agency RPA, whom Spaulding had gotten to know through his  spot  endeavors.

Sequestered gaining inclusion into the Tribeca lineup means a lot to Spaulding, not only in terms of recognition for his directorial efforts but also because he lived in NY for a number of years, getting his start there in editing at MacKenzie Cutler where he came up the ranks as an assistant all the way to full fledged editor. He has, though, had a hand in a Tribeca film before, editing the Michael Shapiro-directed Jihad which in 2005 won the festival’s Best Narrative Short honor.

Spaulding said that moving into the director’s chair for Sequestered was an attempt to “push myself. I’m starting to approach middle age and thought it would be a good time to shake myself a bit and move into different areas. I also very much wanted to inspire my son who is getting into filmmaking.”

Spaulding added that he continues to love editing, which remains his prime focus working out of Whitehouse Post. His commercial editing credits range from FedEx’s “Great Idea” (directed by Frank Todaro) for BBDO NY to the recent Academy Awards telecast spot, “Mini-Hollywood,” for Pepsi mini-cans (directed by Kinka Usher) out of agency Mekanism.

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