Filmmaker Ava DuVernay will return to the Toronto International Film Festival with her latest offering, Origin. DuVernay’s film will have a gala screening at Roy Thomson Hall on Monday, September 11. DuVernay will be in attendance.
Written, produced, and directed by Academy Award nominee DuVernay, Origin chronicles the remarkable life and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson (played by Academy Award nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) as she investigates the genesis of injustice and uncovers a hidden truth that affects us all.
Origin stands as a unique account of the intimacy within a writer’s quest for truth. DuVernay creates powerful cinematic images from the stories that Wilkerson brought to light in her non-fiction work “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” as well as the tragic moments of her personal life which framed her writing. It results in a deeply moving portrait of grief and healing–both personally and in the world.
“Ava DuVernay’s Origin is a brilliantly crafted showcase of her talent as a writer, producer, and director. This is audacious filmmaking on a grand, global scale,” said TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey, “DuVernay deftly weaves Isabel Wilkerson’s big idea about how we live into a beautiful narrative of passion and discovery. I can’t wait for Toronto audiences to feel its power.”
Paul Garnes and DuVernay produced Origin under her ARRAY Filmworks banner, and Thane Watkins serves as co-executive producer.
Along with Ellis-Taylor and Jon Bernthal, Origin stars Niecy Nash-Betts, Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Nick Offerman, Blair Underwood, Connie Nielsen, Emily Yancy, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Finn Wittrock, Victoria Pedretti, Isha Blaaker, and Myles Frost. The team of artists behind Origin was led by cinematographer Matthew J. Lloyd, ASC, production designer Ina Mayhew, editor Spencer Averick A.C.E, composer Kris Bowers, costume designer Dominique Dawson, and casting director Aisha Coley.
Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonist and Writer, Dies At 95
Jules Feiffer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer whose prolific output ranged from a long-running comic strip to plays, screenplays and children's books, died Friday. He was 95 and, true to his seemingly tireless form, published his last book just four months ago.
Feiffer's wife, writer JZ Holden, said Tuesday that he died of congestive heart failure at their home in Richfield Springs, New York, and was surrounded by friends, the couple's two cats and his recent artwork.
Holden said her husband had been ill for a couple of years, "but he was sharp and strong up until the very end. And funny."
Artistically limber, Feiffer hopscotched among numerous forms of expression, chronicling the curiosity of childhood, urban angst and other societal currents. To each he brought a sharp wit and acute observations of the personal and political relations that defined his readers' lives.
As Feiffer explained to the Chicago Tribune in 2002, his work dealt with "communication and the breakdown thereof, between men and women, parents and children, a government and its citizens, and the individual not dealing so well with authority."
Feiffer won the United States' most prominent awards in journalism and filmmaking, taking home a 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons and "Munro," an animated short film he wrote, won a 1961 Academy Award. The Library of Congress held a retrospective of his work in 1996.
"My goal is to make people think, to make them feel and, along the way, to make them smile if not laugh," Feiffer told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1998. "Humor seems to me one of the best ways of espousing ideas. It gets people to listen with their guard down."
Feiffer was born on Jan. 26, 1929, in the Bronx. From... Read More