Bicoastal production studio m ss ng p eces has brought filmmaker Lance Oppenheim aboard its roster for commercials and branded content worldwide. His first feature film, Some Kind of Heaven, will premiere on January 26 at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
Oppenheim is a filmmaker from South Florida who has recently gained recognition as a 2019 Sundance Ignite Fellow. Oppenheim’s work explores the lives of people who create homes in unconventional spaces and places–from mobile homes in an airport parking lot to Royal Caribbean cruise ships. Produced by Darren Aronofsky and The New York Times, his new film Some Kind of Heaven follows four retirees seeking solace and meaning behind the gates of America’s largest retirement community, The Villages, FL. Oppenheim is the youngest active contributor to The New York Times Op-Docs, having made three award-winning documentary shorts, Long Term Parking, No Jail Time: The Movie, and The Happiest Guy in the World. Oppenheim’s films have been screened at film festivals across the world including Sundance, Rotterdam, Tribeca, and True/False. His work has been featured by the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian, and online by The New York Times, The Atlantic, Vimeo (as six Staff Picks) and Short of the Week. He joins m ss ng p eces following his graduation from Harvard University’s Visual and Environmental Studies program in May 2019.
“Many of my films follow people living on the margins, pursuing their own individualized versions of an American Dream,” said Oppenheim who prior to joining m ss ng p eces was repped in the ad arena by Tool of North America. “What I’m after is stretching the documentary genre, crafting immersive experiences that eschew traditional talking head interviews and voiceover narration for something different and new. I’m excited to apply my background in doc filmmaking to direct unique, comedic, and deeply human commercial narratives with the team at m ss ng p eces.”
Ari Kuschnir, founder and managing partner at m ss ng p eces, said of Oppenheim, “His unique point of view and his humor and his gift to get to the core of people’s hearts. We’ve been friends since I stumbled across his first short film and I’ve been advising him since. He is a force and I can’t wait to tell beautiful stories with him.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More