Register

    Director Benji Weinstein Comes Aboard Smuggler Roster

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments4646 Views
    Benji Weinstein
    LOS ANGELES --

    Director Benji Weinstein has joined production company Smuggler. He had previously been handled by Tool of North America for commercials and branded content. 

    Among Weinstein’s notable credits is REI’s “#OptOutside” campaign from Venables Bell & Partners, San Francisco, produced by Tool and earning Cannes Lion Grand Prix distinction in both Promo & Activation and Titanium in 2016. Per the campaign, REI closed its retail stores on Black Friday so that their employees and customers could instead enjoy the great outdoors, spending the time around Thanksgiving to be with family and friends. “#OptOutside” also garnered two Direct Gold Lions, a Promo & Activation Gold Lion, a Cyber Gold Lion, an Integrated Gold Lion, a Design Silver Lion, a PR Silver Lion, a Mobile Silver Lion, a PR Bronze Lion and a Mobile Bronze Lion.

    “#OptOutside” additionally scored top honors at the 2016 One Show, winning the Gold Pencil for Best in Show, along with Gold Pencils in six other categories, and three Silver Pencils. The REI campaign was also honored in the AICP Next Awards’ Integrated Campaign category.

    Weinstein’s commercial endeavors span such clients as Diet Dr Pepper for Deutsch, Lowes for BBDO NY, Experian out of The Martin Agency, Xfinity for Goodby Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, and Mentos for BBH London.

    Brian Carmody, co-founder and managing director of Smuggler, said of Weinstein, “This lad is a class act. No airs and graces, just the pure desire to be great at his craft. For me, he’s not just a comedy director–he’s a performance director first and foremost. We’re very much looking forward to this journey together.”

    Category:News
    Tags:Benji WeinsteinBrian CarmodySmuggler



    Raoul Peck Resurrects A Once-Forgotten Anti-Apartheid Photographer In “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”

    Friday, November 22, 2024

    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

    MySHOOT Profiles


    Add A Comment