Kirsten Arongino has joined ArtClass as its executive producer and managing director. As an agency producer for 25-plus years, she scaled revenue and built brands at shops like Deutsch and Ogilvy & Mather and later served as VP and executive producer at Publicis.
Arongino thrives on building partnerships with brands and agencies and managing multidisciplinary teams. Her prowess as a producer is reflected in digital and traditional media campaigns for major brands like Honda, Campari, Walmart, Tiffany & Co., and several culture-forward work music-driven campaigns for The Gap and McDonald’s. Arongino was also formerly the director of production at Yard NYC and managing director at Ammolite Inc.
Recent notable projects from ArtClass include the first ever brand campaign for Lilly Pulitzer, directed by Matvey Fiks and made in partnership with Yard NYC, using AI to marry the brand’s rich heritage with the industry’s newest technology; the new original show Bedtime Stories with Ryan, directed by Vincent Peone and starring Ryan Reynolds for streamer Fubo; and Charlie Kaufman’s dreamy short film Jackals & Fireflies, produced in partnership with Likely Story and shot by Chayse Irvin.
“I was fortunate enough to walk into so many great projects within my first month at ArtClass,” said Arongino. “Every director on their roster is wildly inventive and inspiring to work with. I think it’s a testament to ArtClass taking risks on new talent and supporting them as they grow as commercial filmmakers and its inclination to tackle projects with a diverse range of budgets. I look forward to adding my leadership skills and creative guidance into the mix as ArtClass continues to produce amazing work.”
Geno Imbriale, managing partner of ArtClass, added, “You can’t teach what experience gives you, and Kirsten has that in spades. She’s worked on every side of branded filmmaking and created every iteration of content you can imagine. She’s a joy to work with and the missing ingredient we needed as a company.”
ArtClass partner/director Peone said, “We brought Kirsten on under the pretext of executive producer, but quickly realized that her skills were completely off the charts, not to mention a perfect fit for our shared vision of future growth. I still regret waiting ten full days to promote her to managing director.”
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More