Joseph Bell has become general manager of The Mill Los Angeles. Bell brings a wealth of experience from roles at companies such as Lucasfilm. Most recently he was the chief operating officer of film and television VFX company FuseFX.
Bell held a number of producer and EP roles for over a decade, while recently earning an MBA from UCLA. As GM of The Mill LA, he reports to Mill group COO Johnny Moore and will focus on driving the operational efficiencies that underpin The Mill’s continued delivery of groundbreaking creative work.
The Mill is recognized for pioneering creative technology initiatives, such as its recent collaboration with Universal Pictures on the Welcome to Marwen AR App. The Los Angeles studio also added to its portfolio of iconic commercial work with multiple USA Today Ad Meter-rated spots for Super Bowl 53, as well as other work that continues to be recognized with accolades from the AICP Show, Cannes Lions, and The Webbys.
The Mill’s co-founder and CEO Robin Shenfield stated, “This is an exciting hire for our Los Angeles studio. Joseph adds a layer of operational excellence to a studio that is making truly outstanding work for its clients.”
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