Epoch Films has brought director Jessica Sanders aboard its roster. The filmmaker’s credits include After Innocence, a documentary that scored the Special Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, and the documentary short SING!, which earned an Oscar nomination in ’02.
Among her recent endeavors is a short helping to kick off Sony’s “Make.Believe” campaign for agency 180LA. The short charmingly tells Sander’s creative, personal story about being a filmmaker, including relating insights into her background such as having parents who are Academy Award-winning documentarians. Sanders directed the project when she was at Nonfiction Unlimited, the house which handled her for commercials and branded content prior to her joining Epoch.
“What prompted us to sign Jessica is not only the ability to tell human stories in an artful, entertaining way but her entire persona. She is a great creative and cultural fit for Epoch Films. We need both,” said Jerry Solomon, managing partner of Epoch. “Although Jessica comes from a documentary background, it’s too limiting to describe her talents. She is a filmmaker with a wide array of experiences and influences to draw upon. Her work is graphic and beautiful, and most of all honest.”
Over the course of her career, Sanders has tackled subjects ranging from the wrongful conviction of an innocent man to a community children’s chorus facing budget cutbacks to a girl born with the birthmark of the Great Wall of China to September 11th. She has shot such notables as Al Gore, Sacha Baron Cohen and George Takei.
Writers of “Conclave,” “Say Nothing” Win Scripter Awards
The authors and screenwriters behind the film “Conclave” and the series “Say Nothing” won the 37th-annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards during a black-tie ceremony at USC’s Town and Gown ballroom on Saturday evening (2/22).
The Scripter Awards recognize the year’s most accomplished adaptations of the written word for the screen, including both feature-length films and episodic series.
Novelist Robert Harris and screenwriter Peter Straughan took home the award for “Conclave.”
In accepting the award, Straughan said, “Adaptation is a really strange process, you’re very much the servant of two masters. In a way it’s an act of betrayal of one master for the other.” He joked that “You start off with a book that you love, you read it again and again, and then you end up throwing it over your shoulder,” crediting author Robert Harris for being “so kind, so generous, so open throughout.”
In the episodic series category, Joshua Zetumer and Patrick Radden Keefe won for the episode “The People in the Dirt” from the limited series “Say Nothing,” which Zetumer adapted from Keefe’s nonfiction book about the Troubles in Ireland.
Zetumer referenced this year’s extraordinary group of Scripter finalists, saying “projects like these reminded me of why I wanted to become a writer when I was sitting in USC’s Leavey Library dreaming of becoming a screenwriter. If you fell in love with movies, or fell in love with TV, chances are you fell in love with something dangerous.”
Special guest for the evening, actress and producer Jennifer Beals, shared her thoughts on the impact of libraries. “If ever you are at a loss wondering if there is good in the world,” she said, “you have only to go to a... Read More