Commercial production company Superlounge has secured Deirdre Rymer and Rachel Paget of indie rep firm Blush to handle the West Coast. Additionally Ann Asprodites is on board to rep Superlounge in the Southeastern U.S….Marketing executive Jennifer Smith has been named senior VP and chief marketing officer at Avid, based in the company’s Burlington, MA headquarters. Reporting directly to Avid president and CEO Louis Hernandez, Jr., Smith will be responsible for driving all aspects of Avid’s worldwide market presence and growth, including its strategic positioning, go-to-market strategies, and all marketing disciplines within the organization. Her role will be vital in fulfilling the Avid Everywhere vision to help media organizations and content creators connect with their audiences more powerfully and efficiently than ever before through innovative technologies such as the industry-changing Avid MediaCentral Platform. Smith will also oversee Avid’s strategic collaboration with customers via the Avid Customer Association. Smith brings 15 years of senior management experience in technology marketing at major software companies both in the U.S. and internationally. She joins Avid from Progress Software, where she held increasingly senior leadership roles on the marketing team before becoming the company’s chief marketing officer and senior VP, and where she led a very successful re-branding initiative. Before her seven years at Progress, Smith held marketing leadership positions in several different companies in Europe, including Peoplesoft and Microsoft….
Martin Scorsese On “The Saints,” Faith In Filmmaking and His Next Movie
When Martin Scorsese was a child growing up in New York's Little Italy, he would gaze up at the figures he saw around St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. "Who are these people? What is a saint?" Scorsese recalls. "The minute I walk out the door of the cathedral and I don't see any saints. I saw people trying to behave well within a world that was very primal and oppressed by organized crime. As a child, you wonder about the saints: Are they human?" For decades, Scorsese has pondered a project dedicated to the saints. Now, he's finally realized it in "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints," an eight-part docudrama series debuting Sunday on Fox Nation, the streaming service from Fox News Media. The one-hour episodes, written by Kent Jones and directed by Elizabeth Chomko, each chronicle a saint: Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Sebastian and Maximillian Kolbe. Joan of Arc kicks off the series on Sunday, with three weekly installments to follow; the last four will stream closer to Easter next year. In naturalistic reenactments followed by brief Scorsese-led discussions with experts, "The Saints" emphasizes that, yes, the saints were very human. They were flawed, imperfect people, which, to Scorsese, only heightens their great sacrifices and gestures of compassion. The Polish priest Kolbe, for example, helped spread antisemitism before, during WWII, sheltering Jews and, ultimately, volunteering to die in the place of a man who had been condemned at Auschwitz. Scorsese, who turns 82 on Sunday, recently met for an interview not long after returning from a trip to his grandfather's hometown in Sicily. He was made an honorary citizen and the experience was still lingering in his mind. Remarks have... Read More