Director Steve McQueen, whose 12 Years a Slave won the Best Picture Oscar in 2014, has joined production company Superprime for commercial representation in the U.S. Superprime will produce McQueen’s advertising work in collaboration with his London-based production company, Lammas Park.
“Steve is a visionary and a pioneer, both as an artist and a filmmaker,” said Rebecca Skinner, managing director/executive producer at Superprime. “His films resonate powerfully with audiences and we look forward to bringing his vision to advertising.”
After attending Goldsmiths in 1993, McQueen created a series of critically acclaimed video works and short films commissioned for galleries. In 1999, he was awarded the Turner Prize, the highest honor for a British visual artist.
His first feature, Hunger, premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, where he became the first British director to win the Caméra d’Or award. Shame, his second major theatrical release, arrived in 2011, followed by 12 Years a Slave in 2013. An unflinching portrayal of the Antebellum South, 12 Years a Slave garnered McQueen a BAFTA for Best Film, a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director, and a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture-Drama. In 2014, 12 Years a Slave earned McQueen distinction as the first Black filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Next month, BBC and Amazon will air Small Axe, McQueen’s anthology series of five personal stories set within London’s West Indian community between 1969 and 1982. After stories from Small Axe premiered at the New York and London Film Festivals, McQueen became the first director ever to have two films [Mangrove and Lovers Rock from the Small Axe anthology] in competition at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival. He has dedicated the films to George Floyd “and all the other Black people that have been murdered, seen or unseen, because of who they are, in the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere. ‘If you are the big tree, we are the small axe.’ Black Lives Matter.”
Time Magazine included McQueen in its annual Time 100 list of the Most Influential People in the World, and he has twice been listed in the Powerlist Top 10 of the most influential Black Britons. He has been granted the British Film Institute’s highest honor, the BFI Fellowship, and was knighted in the 2020 New Year Honours for his services to the arts. His advertising work includes projects for Burberry and Chanel and a nine-minute short film for Kanye West’s “All Day.”
“It’s about seeing, contemplating, serious consideration,” McQueen told The Guardian in 2020. “It’s about being seen, and heard and recognized, so as the years pass they can’t make you invisible. You want to ensure that what you do will have a lasting effect.”
Michelle Satter To Be Honored At Sundance Film Festival Gala
The nonprofit Sundance Institute today announced details for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s gala fundraiser, Celebrating Sundance Institute, which will take place on Friday, January 24, 2025 at the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley in Utah. The event will be an evening in celebration of Michelle Satter, founding sr. director of artist programs at Sundance Institute, for her longstanding commitment to nurturing artists and cultivating independent film through the Sundance Labs, where visionary artists convene to develop groundbreaking projects through an in-depth creative process, for the past four decades. The annual Vanguard Awards will be presented during the evening to Sean Wang, writer and director of Dìdi, and Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, co-directors of Sugarcane, who premiered their films at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
The annual gala enables the nonprofit to raise funds to support independent artists year-round through labs, grants, and public programming that nurture artists from all over the world. The 2025 event is made possible with the generous support of Google TV. The Festival will take place from January 23–February 2, 2025, in person in Park City and Salt Lake City, with a selection of titles available online from January 30–February 2, 2025 for audiences across the country to discover bold independent storytelling.
“For over four decades Michelle has been devoted to truly championing independent storytellers,” said Amanda Kelso, acting CEO of Sundance Institute. “She has encouraged artists to own their voice, learn their craft, become fierce leaders, and develop their resilience in our changing ecosystem. Her life-long commitment to supporting artists, especially in underrepresented... Read More