Welcome to the Special Spring 2018 Edition of SHOOT’s Directors Series. Our mix of profiles includes Luca Guadagnino whose Call Me by Your Name landed four Academy Award nominations, including for Best Picture, and Bryan Fogel who won the Best Documentary Feature Oscar for Icarus. Both filmmakers also have production company affiliations for commercials and branded content—Little Minx for Guadagnino, and Supply&Demand for Fogel.
On the spotmaking front, we profile Martin de Thurah of Epoch Films who recently won the DGA Award as Best Commercial Director of the Year. And then there’s the prolific spot and music video duo, Dom&Nic, who are handled in the U.S. by Station Film and in the U.K. by Outsider.
Another ad artisan, director DeMane Davis—who is repped by Sweet Rickey—now finds herself committed to another discipline for the next six months or so as producing director for season three of Queen Sugar, Ava DuVernay’s acclaimed primetime series on Oprah Winfrey’s network OWN.
We also connect with accomplished narrative filmmaker Rebecca Miller who’s made her first foray into the documentary discipline with a personal, eye-opening look into the life of her father, the late, legendary playwright Arthur Miller.
Rounding out our profiles lineup are two filmmakers who have scored on this year’s festival circuit. Alison Klayman with Take Your Pills, a documentary which premiered at SXSW; and Rudy Valdez whose feature directorial debut The Sentence won the U.S. Documentary Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Klayman’s roost for commercials and branded fare is Washington Square Films while Valdez has come aboard the spotmaking roster of Park Pictures.
Meanwhile our ensemble of up-and-coming talent consists of a skate video filmmaker who just made a major breakthrough at Sundance; a director who established herself in London, has turned out some initial notable U.S. campaign work and is just taking on her first representation in the American ad market; a prolific music video director who has since diversified into commercials, branded content and shorts; and a helmer whose work in fashion, music and dance has struck a responsive chord with brands and audiences.
SHOOT also delves into Leading Producers, gleaning insights from Peter Spears, a first-time producer who became a Best Picture Oscar nominee for Call Me by Your Name; Alison Benson, EP of HBO’s Divorce; Ken Biller, EP of Genius, covering season 1 on Albert Einstein and the much anticipated season 2 on Pablo Picasso; Mike Medavoy, EP of the limited series The Long Road Home; and Jane Root, who’s teaming with Darren Aronofsky to produce the docuseries One Strange Rock.
And then in our Cinematographers & Cameras Series, we meet three DPs—one who recently won his first ASC Award on the strength of The Crown; another who lensed Strong Island, nominated for this year’s Best Documentary Feature Oscar; and a lenser whose career was launched by David Fincher with the Netflix series Mindhunter, which in turn has opened up new spot opportunities.
Director Profiles:
DeMane Davis
Martin de Thurah
Dom& Nic
Bryan Fogel
Luca Guadagnino
Alison Klayman
Rebecca Miller
Rudy Valdez
Features:
Up-and-Coming Directors: Springing Forward With New Talent
Leading Producers Fresh Produce: Perspectives on Film, TV
Cinematographers & Cameras: Insights into The Crown, Strong Island, Mindhunter, Spots
In time for Oct. 7 Anniversary, “We Will Dance Again” Documents Hamas’ Attack On Israel Music Festival
Horror came with sunrise following an all-night rave near the Gaza border on Oct. 7, 2023, the Hamas attack presaged by rockets that some young people mistakenly thought were fireworks.
A new documentary shows the attack unfold over the next hours in stomach-churning detail: Gunmen mowing down passengers in cars that try to escape. Hiding in a garbage dumpster, or a refrigerator, to avoid detection. Live grenades tossed into a bunker, then thrown out seconds before exploding. Terrified hostages carried away to an uncertain fate.
Veteran news producer Susan Zirinsky calls "We Will Dance Again" the most significant project she's ever worked on, notable praise considering her "9/11" film is arguably the best video document of that day.
How much it is seen, however, may depend as much on context as content.
The film is now streaming on the Paramount+ service and debuted last weekend on Showtime, in advance of the attack's one-year anniversary. Distributors acknowledge, however, that it has been a hard sell in markets across the world: many potential outlets and film festivals did not want to wade into a hot-button political issue with war in the Mideast grinding on.
Different openings were made for different markets
A message at the film's beginning acknowledges that the human cost of the Oct. 7 massacre and the war that followed in Gaza "has been catastrophic for both Israelis and Palestinians" and lists the death toll on both sides. "This film cannot tell everyone's story," it says.
The message does not appear, however, when "We Will Dance Again" is screened in Israel.
"We are documenting a moment in history," Zirinsky said. "This is not a political film. This happened."
The former CBS... Read More