International production company Stink Films has brought director Andrew Litten aboard its roster in the U.S. for commercials, music videos, and branded content.
Since forging his aesthetic in Atlanta’s rich underground music and fashion scenes, Litten has used his life experiences to shape a perspective that is simultaneously dreamlike and informed by lived experience. His visual storytelling explores the nuances of humanity while transcending the expected formula. Prior to joining Stink, Litten was repped by production house Voyager.
Litten’s work has screened at the Atlanta and St. Louis International Film Festivals, and been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Vimeo’s Staff Picks. His brand collaborations include projects for Northwestern Medicine, Spotify featuring Anderson .Paak, Kellogg’s, and a film for P&G that profiles the lives of the company’s employees across six countries: Brazil, India, China, Japan, Germany, and the U.S. Litten’s credits also include the “King’s Blvd” music video for Nana.
“Andrew is immensely talented. His innate sense for blending the surreal with the tangible is one of a kind,” said Stink founder Daniel Bergmann. “The emotions he captures on film are rich and humane. He elicits truth from every performance he films.”
“I’m beyond happy to be working with the legendary team at Stink,” said Litten. “I know that this next chapter is going to be unlike anything to date, and I’m ready to make great work with them.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More