The title of this installment of spot.com.mentary is a prevalent theme throughout this Directors Series issue as filmmakers ranging from emerging to established continue to be sparked by their passions, yielding notable work.
On the established director front, consider the POV below this column in which we cover director David Ramser of The Artists Company who in-between his paid professional spot gigs is pursuing projects of personal interest, including The Foreclosure of Cristina Ramos, a short which puts a human face on the mortgage meltdown. At press time, Ramser was in South Central Los Angeles–with camera in hand–covering an after-school program designed to prevent inner city kids from turning to drugs or crime.
Ramser explained, “I wanted to take on other kinds of projects that directly affect me, that have been brought to my attention by some relationship to the subject matter. For me, this is fun. This wasn’t a directorial decision so that I could skip out on comedy and get more work of a different sort. I love comedy–that’s what I do professionally. But I wanted some passion projects to express myself in other ways, to explore interesting things I care about or that just strike my imagination.”
Similarly, directors looking to establish themselves find that guided by their passions they can gain exposure for their talent, a prime case in point being Jimmy Diebold of Bodega Studios whose Midnight Lights–an art/architectural film centered on an ambitious, logistically complex light show he orchestrated at CenturyLink Field in Seattle–has generated some 500,000 hits on YouTube and counting. The light show plays like classic animation, made up of thousands of still images assembled to sync up to a dubstep rendition of “Midnight City” by M83, remixed by PatrickReza. The short has also sparked heightened industry interest in Diebold who is covered in this week’s Up-and-Coming Directors feature.
And a passion pursuit of an established yet at the same time still emerging director, Daniel Junge, who too is a focus of our Up-and-Coming Directors feature story, has yielded Saving Face, this year’s Academy Award winner for Best Short Subject Documentary.
Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy co-directed Saving Face, which introduces us to Dr. Mohammad Jawad who returns to his Pakistan homeland to help victims of acid burns. We see the women who are recovering and reclaiming their lives, and a female attorney who fights to see that the perpetrators of this crime are brought to justice.
Junge knew about incidents of acid attacks on women in South Asia, often committed by their husbands or boyfriends as part of an ongoing pattern of abuse.
The director found an avenue to pursue the subject when he heard a BBC Radio report about Dr. Jawad who’s based in the U.K.
The result is a documentary which movingly captures both the plight as well as the courage of these victimized women in Pakistan, chronicles the progress being made to prosecute the perpetrators of these attacks, and the efforts of a plastic surgeon to heal not just the physical wounds but the emotional scars as well.
Trump Asks Supreme Court To Delay TikTok Ban
President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a "political resolution" to the issue.
The request came as TikTok and the Biden administration filed opposing briefs to the court, in which the company argued the court should strike down a law that could ban the platform by Jan. 19 while the government emphasized its position that the statute is needed to eliminate a national security risk.
"President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute. Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act's deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case," said Trump's amicus brief, which supported neither party in the case and was written by D. John Sauer, Trump's choice for solicitor general.
The argument submitted to the court is the latest example of Trump inserting himself in national issues before he takes office. The Republican president-elect has already begun negotiating with other countries over his plans to impose tariffs, and he intervened earlier this month in a plan to fund the federal government, calling for a bipartisan plan to be rejected and sending Republicans back to the negotiating table.
He has been holding meetings with foreign leaders and business officials at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida while he assembles his administration, including a meeting last week with TikTok CEO Shou Chew.
Trump has reversed his position on the popular app, having tried to ban it during his first term in office over national security concerns. He joined the TikTok during his 2024 presidential campaign and his team used it to connect with younger... Read More