Madheart, the L.A. shop headed by exec producer Lisa Phillips and representing director Jan Gleie, has expanded its ensemble of filmmaking talent. The production house has signed commercial director Jonas Arnby for the U.S. market, and will serve as stateside rep for The Brainstormclub, a Munich-based creative collective co-founded by Arnby. The Brainstormclub’s filmography includes notable viral ads that have sparked controversy and earned advertising awards across Europe.
Plans call for Madheart to add more directors shortly. The company has also appointed Catherine De Angeles as head of sales. She will additionally serve as Madheart’s Midwest rep through her indie firm Hot Betty.
Arnby is a Danish-born, British-educated filmmaker who has worked with top agencies across Europe and the U.S. for such brands as Sprite, Harley-Davidson, Peugeot, Quiksilver, TDC Mobile and McDonald’s. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his advertising work, including Clio, Cyber Lion, Creative Circle and Mobius award recognition. He has also directed several short films and music videos, and will direct his first feature next year. Arnby was last repped in the U.S. by TWC and prior to that, The Joneses. He continues to maintain his own company, Schmalz Film, in Copenhagen.
Meanwhile The Brainstormclub, which continues to represent itself in Europe, gains its first career stateside representation via the deal with Madheart. A collective of young filmmakers, advertising creatives, designers and artists, The Brainstormclub was founded in 2007 by Arnby, managing director Yves Peitzner, creative producer Hondo Raktkovic, and sales director Dalibor Tomasevic. Brainstormclub’s work, for such brands as Sony Ericsson, BMW and HBO, primarily consists of viral ads and other viral media, but it has also produced environmental advertising, broadcast commercials, music videos and even fine art installations.
The Brainstormclub won a Bronze Lion at the 2010 Cannes International Advertising Festival for a viral BMW ad in which a motorcycle is used to pull the cloth off a long table set on which is elegant dinnerware. Last month, the same ad took top honors at the Gold Award of Montreux for Best Use of Viral Media.
Madheart’s Phillips said she was drawn to Arnby’s comedic touch and The Brainstormclub’s guerilla marketing sensibilities.
“It’s an interesting opportunity to introduce our business model,” said Brainstormclub’s Peitzner of linking with Madheart in the U.S. “We aren’t a film production company or an ad agency in the traditional sense so we can be very flexible. We see many possibilities for working with agencies, or clients directly.” Peitzner added, “We are convinced that viral marketing, or rather contagious, branded entertainment, is the future.”
The Madheart sales force consists of Hot Betty in the Midwest, Lisa Gimenez Toliver on the West Coast, and Dana Dubuy on the East Coast.
Martin Scorsese On “The Saints,” Faith In Filmmaking and His Next Movie
When Martin Scorsese was a child growing up in New York's Little Italy, he would gaze up at the figures he saw around St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. "Who are these people? What is a saint?" Scorsese recalls. "The minute I walk out the door of the cathedral and I don't see any saints. I saw people trying to behave well within a world that was very primal and oppressed by organized crime. As a child, you wonder about the saints: Are they human?" For decades, Scorsese has pondered a project dedicated to the saints. Now, he's finally realized it in "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints," an eight-part docudrama series debuting Sunday on Fox Nation, the streaming service from Fox News Media. The one-hour episodes, written by Kent Jones and directed by Elizabeth Chomko, each chronicle a saint: Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Sebastian and Maximillian Kolbe. Joan of Arc kicks off the series on Sunday, with three weekly installments to follow; the last four will stream closer to Easter next year. In naturalistic reenactments followed by brief Scorsese-led discussions with experts, "The Saints" emphasizes that, yes, the saints were very human. They were flawed, imperfect people, which, to Scorsese, only heightens their great sacrifices and gestures of compassion. The Polish priest Kolbe, for example, helped spread antisemitism before, during WWII, sheltering Jews and, ultimately, volunteering to die in the place of a man who had been condemned at Auschwitz. Scorsese, who turns 82 on Sunday, recently met for an interview not long after returning from a trip to his grandfather's hometown in Sicily. He was made an honorary citizen and the experience was still lingering in his mind. Remarks have... Read More