Sami Tahari has joined Imaginary Forces’ L.A. studio as director of business development. Tahari brings extensive marketing, business and product development experience spanning the tech and entertainment spaces. Tahari previously served as partner manager at Google, where his team built the Google Glass at Work enterprise division from the ground up. His Google career kicked off as a program manager for the Glass Creative Collective, an experimental initiative, which partnered YouTube and top film schools to create awareness and media buzz for Google Glass. Under Tahari’s watch, the program saw the release of several popular online film and gaming projects, including Seeds, a Mother’s Day-themed short from USC that went viral (2.8M YouTube views); Pumpkin Zombie, a Halloween-themed short, which Tahari wrote and produced; and Grace Plains, an augmented reality game developed by UCLA in conjunction with YouTube. Tahari broke into the world of entertainment at Lionsgate, where he worked on the international marketing team for indie films and blockbuster titles, such as The Hunger Games….
Cutters Studios New York has promoted Julia Pepe to director of business development for the U.S. East Coast. The announcement was made by executive producer Elizabeth Krajewski and managing director Craig Duncan. Pepe joined Cutters in New York in 2014 as a producer, following previous stints with mcgarrybowen in Chicago as producer and studio manager. Cutters named her senior producer in 2015, and over this span, she has contributed to projects for the United Nations, the Museum of Modern Art, major agencies, publishers and media companies worldwide, many direct-to-client projects for NHL and others, and for several feature film and episodic television projects….
First-Time Feature Directors Make Major Splash At AFI Fest, Generate Oscar Buzz
Two first-time feature directors who are generating Oscar buzz this awards season were front and center this past weekend at AFI Fest in Hollywood. Rachel Morrison, who made history as the first woman nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar---on the strength of Mudbound in 2018--brought her feature directorial debut, The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM Studios), to the festival on Sunday (10/27), and shared insights into the film during a conversation session immediately following the screening. This came a day after William Goldenberg, an Oscar-winning editor for Argo in 2013, had his initial foray into feature directing, Unstoppable (Amazon MGM Studios), showcased at the AFI proceedings. He too spoke after the screening during a panel discussion. The Fire Inside--which made its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival--tells the story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (portrayed by Ryan Destiny), a Black boxer from Flint, Mich., who trained to become the first woman in U.S. history to win an Olympic Gold Medal in the sport. She achieved this feat--with the help of coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry)--only to find that her victory at the Summer Games came with relatively little fanfare and no endorsement deals. So much for the hope that the historic accomplishment would be a ticket out of socioeconomic purgatory for Shields and her family. It seemed like yet another setback in a cycle of adversity throughout Shields’ life but she persevered, going on to win her second Gold Medal at the next Olympics and becoming a champion for gender equality and equitable pay for women in sports. Shields has served as a source of inspiration for woman athletes worldwide--as well as to the community of... Read More