Mayra Ocampo has been promoted and will join the executive staff of the Directors Guild of America as assistant executive director in the Guild’s Los Angeles headquarters.
“Since joining the DGA, Mayra has helped to grow our organizing and expand our services to address the unique needs of our members working in non-dramatic categories including reality television,” said Jay D. Roth, DGA national executive director. “As assistant executive director, she will now build upon those efforts and take on additional duties as part of the DGA’s senior management team. We look forward to putting her deep experience and specialized skills to use in the service of our members who work across an array of categories.”
Ocampo joined the DGA in 2014 as a field representative, and was promoted to special assignments executive in 2015 where she expanded her work in non-dramatic categories including reality, and assisted in the administration and enforcement of the Guild’s Freelance Live and Tape Television Agreement–in addition to serving as the liaison to the Guild’s Women’s Steering and Asian American committees. She will continue to report to Lisa Layer, associate Western executive director.
Ocampo has more than two decades of labor union and membership organization experience. Prior to joining the DGA, Ocampo was the director of government affairs at the Nevada Local of the Service Employees International Union. She has also worked in various national and regional organizing roles for the AFL-CIO, United American Nurses, and the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees International Union.
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 โ and those many "Babadook" memes โ 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 โ "Bah-Bah-Doooook" โ 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