LOS ANGELES-The Directors Guild of America has promoted western executive director Warren Adler to the newly created post of associate national executive director, the Guild’s second-highest ranking executive. It has also promoted Bryan Unger from assistant executive director to the newly created position of associate western executive director. He will oversee the DGA’s services for the organization’s western region members.
Adler joined the DGA in 1975 as associate general counsel and became assistant western executive director in ’81 and western executive director in ’90. In that most recent capacity, he was responsible for contract enforcement and special agreements. Adler has also handled grievances and arbitrations, negotiated agreements, and currently serves as a trustee of the DGA pension and health plan.
Unger will oversee the DGA’s services for the organization’s western region members. Prior to joining the Los Angeles-based organization in 1994, Unger spent five years as an international representative with IATSE in New York.
The DGA represents more than 10,000 members whose creative work is featured in live theater, industrial, educational, documentary and theatrical films, as well as live, filmed and taped television, radio, videos and commercials.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More