Content agency Los York has signed director Jason Zada who over the years has demonstrated an affinity for breaking new ground across multiple screens. Zada’s body of wide ranging work includes the 2016 feature film The Forest (starring Game of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer), the Emmy, D&AD, SXSW and AICP Next Award-winning interactive Facebook Connect experience “Take This Lollipop,” varied digital and technology-forward projects, music videos and dozens of traditional commercials,
Zada made his first major industry splash in 2000 with the launch of Evolution Bureau (EVB), an agency which created memorable work in the digital storytelling arena, a prime example being “Elf yourself,” Office Max’s interactive viral website. When Omnicom acquired EVB, Zada turned to directing full time at Tool of North America where he enjoyed a seven-year tenure and turned out work for clients such as Sony, Adidas, Goodyear, Old Spice, Sega and Showtime. Tool also produced the aforementioned “Take This Lollipop.” Most recently, prior to joining Los York, Zada was on the directorial roster of production house PRETTYBIRD.
During the course of his career, Zada has collaborated with agencies such as Wieden+Kennedy, Crispin Porter+Bogusky, Leo Burnett, Grey, Saatchi & Saatchi, and RPA.
Zada said of his new bicoastal roost, “Los York is a next generation of content agency that’s really fostering a new class of storytellers/directors, supporting them in leading impressive campaigns from concept through production to final delivery. This new model creates incredibly integrated ideation and production that allows us all to do more. I am incredibly excited to welcome in a new wave of content creation with Los York.”
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