Director Andy Mahr has joined the roster of Dallas-based production company Motion Content, Inc. Mahr made his initial mark in advertising as an art director and creative director on accounts including Hummer, Discovery Channel, American Airlines, Texas Tourism, Bell Helicopter and Nationwide Insurance.
After years of creating campaigns for advertising agencies including, Pyro, The Richards Group, and TM Advertising, Mahr successfully made the transition from art director to a career in photography. His photography credits include work for Nike, RAM Trucks, United States Marine Corps, Toyota, California Tourism, and Chick-fil-A. His work has been continually recognized in Communication Arts, and he was named one of Archive Magazine's 200 Best Ad Photographers Worldwide in 2012, 2014 and 2015.
In 2013 Mahr was among those whose work was featured in The Richards Group’s lauded Super Bowl commercial, “Farmer,” for RAM Trucks. Imagery in the two-minute Super Bowl spot also came from such notables as William Albert Allard of National Geographic fame and noted documentary photographer Kurt Markus. The ad tapped into the “So God Made a Farmer” speech made by famed radio broadcaster Paul Harvey in 1978 at the National Future Farmers of America Convention. The eloquent remarks became even more poetic and lyrical when accompanied by images capturing U.S. farm life for the Ram Trucks’ Big Game spot.
Mahr now aims to bring his dramatic visual sensibility and gift for capturing the genuineness of real people to the moving picture. At Motion Content, he joins executive producer Diana Payer, and a talent pool that includes directing team Peter & Annie, and Brooklyn-based Todd Broder.
Payer said of adding Mahr to the Motion Content roster, “Andy’s work has a truthfulness to it that is just incredibly powerful. I’ve long been a fan of his photography, and am looking forward to working alongside Andy as he brings that talent to the motion side.”
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