Director and writer Marleen Valien has signed with Anonymous Content for her first commercial and music video representation in the U.S. and U.K. Based in Berlin, Valien has a body of work which spans short films, commercials and music videos.
Her commercial work includes campaigns for Pinterest and German publishing house Reclam; and her stop-motion spec commercials for Oatly won two golds at the Young Directors Award and were honored at the Spotlight Festival. She has also directed music video promos for Milky Chance and Midnight Tracks, the latter of which won her a silver YDA and a UKMVA nomination.
Her short films include the award-winning Hot Dog, Not the 80s, and A Small Cut, lavishly shot explorations of sexuality and coming of age, which premiered at festivals including Sundance, Tribeca and Clermont-Ferrand.
Before studying directing at the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy, Valien studied visual communication at the University of the Arts in Berlin, where her classes included art with professor and artist Ai Weiwei.
Her latest work, the mockumentary with feminist arts group Who Needs Feminism Today?, questions why so many billionaires “are flying into space in rockets shaped like male genitalia” and seeks to restore gender equality to the cosmos. The film was shortlisted for three Cannes Lions, including the Glass Lion for Change. It was also featured on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Valien is currently writing her first feature film.
Immersion In Sight, Sound and Story At Sphere
Live sports and cinematic storytelling meshed earlier this month (9/14) at Sphere, the revolutionary new entertainment venue in Las Vegas. UFC 306, Sphere’s first live sports event, brought mixed martial arts boxing matches together with the world premiere of a film--For Mexico, For All Time--which played out in six 90-second chapters in between the bouts on the UFC pay-per-view card. Each chapter focused on a different period in Mexican history and its influence on shaping Mexican identity. Shown on the massive interior display of Sphere, For Mexico, For All Time was created by filmmaker Carlos López Estrada and produced by Valerie Bush via Antigravity Academy, and co-produced by Nexus Studios. Sound designer, supervising sound editor and lead re-recording mixer Drazen Bosnjak and his team at New York-headquartered Q Department brought their creative and technical wherewithal to For Mexico, For All Time, dovetailing with the sound ensemble at Sphere and indie composer Germaine Franco. They contributed to what turned out to be the highest grossing UFC event of all time, and the highest grossing single event at Sphere, playing before a sold out crowd of 16,024. López Estrada, whose work as writer-director on Raya and the Last Dragon earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature Film in 2022, described For Mexico, For All Time as “a larger-than-life project,” referring to its size and scope--on varied fronts. For one, Sphere houses the world’s highest resolution LED display coupled with a 167,000 speaker audio system, facilitating an immersive multi-sensory experience. López Estrada’s studio, Antigravity Academy, had a steep learning curve relative to the process of creating and producing a film that... Read More