Alex Prager has signed with production company Arts & Sciences for spots in the U.S. This marks her first career commercial representation. A fine art photographer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles, Prager began her career in photography after seeing a William Eggleston show and has been one with the camera ever since. Her work consists of elaborately staged scenes that draw inspiration from a wide range of influences and references, including Hollywood cinema, experimental films, popular culture, and street photography. Her familiar yet uncanny imagery depicts worlds that synthesize fiction and reality. The highly choreographed nature of her photographs and films embody a visual vocabulary that has become uniquely her own, while also lending itself naturally to the world of advertising.
Prager has received numerous awards, including the FOAM Paul Huf Award in 2012, The Vevey International Photography Award in 2009, and The London Photographic Award in 2006. Her editorial work has been featured in publications including Vogue, W Magazine and New York Magazine. Her first film Despair was exhibited in 2010 alongside her work in the New Photography show at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and she won an Emmy in 2012 for her film series Touch of Evil, commissioned by The New York Times Magazine. She was also commissioned by the Paris Opera Ballet, which inspired her to create La Grande Sortie, a 10-minute film and a body of work that was shown at Lehmann Maupin in 2016. Her first major public commission, Applause, for Times Square Arts: Midnight Moment, New York, took place in the summer of 2017. An exhibition of her work is currently on view at Lehmann Maupin in Hong Kong, and in June 2018, a major monograph of her work, Silver Lake Drive, will be published by Thames & Hudson. Prager has worked with brands including Mercedes-Benz and Nordstrom. Her most recent advertising work includes films for Hermes and Julep out of Joan Creative.
“I love the collaborative process of commercial filmmaking and the creative challenge of always finding new ways to communicate with different audiences,” said Prager. “I’m excited to have Arts & Sciences in my corner as I take on this simultaneously familiar and new approach to making art.”
“Alex’s visionary work as a fine artist, filmmaker and photographer is remarkable,” said Mal Ward, managing partner, Arts & Sciences.
Prager and Arts & Sciences are represented on the West Coast by Dexter Randazzo and Aaron Friedland at The Department of Sales, in the Midwest by Mary Kate Hatfield at MKH Representation, and on the East Coast by Tara Averill, John Robertson and Erin Wahed at Representation Co.
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