NY-headquartered Deep Focus, a global digitally-led creative agency and part of Engine Group, has appointed Anna Ibbotson to serve as president of its Los Angeles office. Reporting to founder and chairman Ian Schafer, Ibbotson will be responsible for building and managing a team of 80-plus, as well as overseeing the augmentation of Deep Focus’ branded content capabilities through collaboration with sister content and entertainment marketing agency Trailer Park.
Ibbotson has a strong hybrid background in both the production and ad marketing industries. Prior to joining Deep Focus, she was sr. partner, executive group director at Ogilvy & Mather in Los Angeles and Chicago. She previously ran operations and production at LA Digital Post (now owned by Moviola), as well as supervised postproduction at Modern Video Film for Warner Bros., FOX and CBS network properties including The OC, Gossip Girl and Malcolm in The Middle.
“My vision is to establish the LA office as a creatively driven agency fueled by insights, technology and innovation,” said Ibbotson. “Deep Focus doesn’t believe in the divide between traditional and digital marketing. We’re holistic in both our strategic thinking and in our client solutions, and it’s what continues to set us apart in an ever-evolving digital age.”
Throughout her 20-year career, Ibbotson has touched some of the world’s largest brands, including Kimberly Clark, Xerox, Adobe, AT&T, HTC, Tabasco and Taco Bell.
Raoul Peck Resurrects A Once-Forgotten Anti-Apartheid Photographer In “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”
When the photographer Ernest Cole died in 1990 at the age of 49 from pancreatic cancer at a Manhattan hospital, his death was little noted.
Cole, one of the most important chroniclers of apartheid-era South Africa, was by then mostly forgotten and penniless. Banned by his native country after the publication of his pioneering photography book "House of Bondage," Cole had emigrated in 1966 to the United States. But his life in exile gradually disintegrated into intermittent homelessness. A six-paragraph obituary in The New York Times ran alongside a list of death notices.
But Cole receives a vibrant and stirring resurrection in Raoul Peck's new film "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found," narrated in Cole's own words and voiced by LaKeith Stanfield. The film, which opens in theaters Friday, is laced throughout with Cole's photographs, many of them not before seen publicly.
As he did in his Oscar-nominated James Baldwin documentary "I Am Not Your Negro," the Haitian-born Peck shares screenwriting credit with his subject. "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is drawn from Cole's own writings. In words and images, Peck brings the tragic story of Cole to vivid life, reopening the lens through which Cole so perceptively saw injustice and humanity.
"Film is a political tool for me," Peck said in a recent interview over lunch in Manhattan. "My job is to go to the widest audience possible and try to give them something to help them understand where they are, what they are doing, what role they are playing. It's about my fight today. I don't care about the past."
"Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is a movie layered with meaning that goes beyond Cole's work. It asks questions not just about the societies Cole documented but of how he was treated as an artist,... Read More