Director Dana Brown, whose credits include the noted surfing documentary Step Into Liquid, has come aboard the roster of Caviar for commercials. This marks the first career spot representation for Brown whose latest long-form credit is Highwater, a feature-length documentary chronicling the 2005 Triple Crown of Surfing on Hawaii’s North Shore. Highwater is slated for release this fall.
Brown’s brings a distinctive filmmaking lineage to Caviar, which maintains offices in Venice, Brussels and Amsterdam. His father is Bruce Brown who helmed the classic surf film, Endless Summer. Dana Brown has collaborated with his father on several projects, including Summer‘s sequels, Endless Summer II and Endless Summer Revisited. Dana Brown directed the latter.
Dana Brown grew up in Dana Point, Calif., and first started making films with his friends at the age of eight. Throughout his teens, he assisted his father on film shoots and later collaborated with him in a more official capacity as a writer, producer and editor on Endless Summer II and Endless Summer Revisited. Dana Brown eventually ventured out on his own with over 50 sports-related productions including the Emmy-nominated series, Surfer’s Journal, and feature-length documentary, Dust to Glory, focused on the Baja 1000 (multi-vehicle race).
Brown’s success with Liquid and Dust to Glory has firmly established him in the non-fiction adventure film genre. “I have always been interested in people and their various obsessions. People with obsessions that might kill them, be it surfing or wartime journalism, are the most fascinating of all,” Brown observed.
Netflix Series “The Leopard” Spots Classic Italian Novel, Remakes It As A Sumptuous Period Drama
"The Leopard," a new Netflix series, takes the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and transforms it into a sumptuous period piece showing the struggles of the aristocracy in 19th-century Sicily, during tumultuous social upheavals as their way of life is crumbling around them.
Tom Shankland, who directs four of the eight episodes, had the courage to attempt his own version of what is one of the most popular films in Italian history. The 1963 movie "The Leopard," directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
One Italian critic said that it would be the equivalent of a director in the United States taking "Gone with the Wind" and turning it into a series, but Shankland wasn't the least bit intimidated.
He said that he didn't think of anything other than his own passion for the project, which grew out of his love of the book. His father was a university professor of Italian literature in England, and as a child, he loved the book and traveling to Sicily with his family.
The book tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, a tall, handsome, wealthy aristocrat who owns palaces and land across Sicily.
His comfortable world is shaken with the invasion of Sicily in 1860 by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was to overthrow the Bourbon king in Naples and bring about the Unification of Italy.
The prince's family leads an opulent life in their magnificent palaces with servants and peasants kowtowing to their every need. They spend their time at opulent banquets and lavish balls with their fellow aristocrats.
Shankland has made the series into a visual feast with tables heaped with food, elaborate gardens and sensuous costumes.... Read More