Global Mechanic, a live-action/animation house with shops in Boston and Vancouver, B.C., has added noted animation director Dirk van de Vondel to its roster. He spent the past six years at Sherbet, London.
Among his recent credits at Sherbet were spots for Nokia and Seat Automobiles. (The Nokia worked aired in the U.S.) He has also helmed American assignments for Coca-Cola and Lee Khakis via Tricky Pictures, Chicago. Adding to his international cache are jobs for Siemens via Cine Nic, Barcelona, and a Tate Gallery project via Richard Purdum Productions, London.
At press time, van de Vondel was wrapping a Nokia spot via Global Mechanic. The ad is slated to break worldwide this month.
A filmmaker and painter, van de Vondel bases his work on observational drawing, meshing design, expressive painting and a sense of weight and grace in movement. He is also known for mixing digital and physical production techniques.
Van de Vondel joins a Global Mechanic lineup of directors that includes Bruce Alcock, Dan Sousa, Nathaniel Akin, Rich Ferguson-Hill, Ian Godfrey, Marv Newland and Cliff Saito. Matthew Charde is the company’s executive producer.
Global Mechanic is active in spots (Kellogg’s Anheuser-Busch, Procter & Gamble, Coke, Mattel, Unilever, Hershey, Kraft, Mattle, Target) and longer form fare. Its latest films are Alcock’s At the Quinte Hotel and Sousa’s Fable. Both continue their run on the festival circuit, with exposure at Sundance, the Toronto International Film Fest, the Chicago International Film Fest, the Ottawa International Animation Festival, the San Francisco International Festival and the Annecy Film Festival. Quinte won best Canadian animated short in Ottawa and the Golden Gate Award in San Francisco.
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