Moxie Pictures has signed writer/director Phillip Van for Global commercial representation. Van has helmed commercial campaigns for a wide range of clients including Blue Cross, Yves Saint Laurent, NBC, Optimum and Tribeca Film Festival that have earned him accolades at the D&AD, One Show, Promax and national Addy awards.
Van’s long-form storytelling acumen is evident in several cinematic web series, including a highly popular series for XBOX that was released as a prequel to the horror video game “Alan Wake” for which he won a 2011 One Show Silver Pencil and D&AD Yellow Pencil Award. Most recently, he completed “Deja View,” an innovative campaign out of Campfire for Infiniti that utilizes voice recognition to dynamically adapt to each viewer, allowing each one to have a unique interaction with the characters and storyline.
Van comes to Moxie from Little Minx, his first commercialmaknig roost while he was wrapping his commitments as a student at NYU’s graduate film program. At that time, he was included in SHOOT’s fall 2007 Up-and-Coming Directors feature story rundown. During his NYU tenure, Van was honored with a Student Academy Award (silver medal) and a BAFTA/LA honorable mention distinction for his thesis film High Maintenance, a comedic, tongue-in-cheek look at how male/female relationships might evolve in the future, offering a wry commentary on the direction in which consumerism and romance are headed.
Van went on to direct several narrative short films that garnered kudos at top festivals including Sundance, Berlin, HBO US Comedy Arts, Seattle, Aspen and Gen Art. During this time, he also helmed numerous international spots, music videos and branded content pieces for Paris-based Mr. Hyde. Among Van’s other numerous commercial projects including a short documentary series for Chevy out of Mother NY. He currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.
Raoul Peck Resurrects A Once-Forgotten Anti-Apartheid Photographer In “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”
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