Director Matthieu Mantovani has joined Photoplay Films for exclusive representation in Australia and New Zealand after completing their first project together. Mantovani, an accomplished comedy and visual narrative director based in Paris, recently worked with Photoplay on a local campaign for NAB, “This Is The Story Of Progress,” with agency Clemenger BBDO. He is behind campaigns for Volkswagen, Peugeot, Audi and Mercedes-Benz–including “The Encounter” for BBDO Paris–and has also directed recent campaigns for insurance giant Allianz and Italian online fashion retailer YOOX. Mantovani has additionally collaborated with creative agencies including BETC, Jung Von Matt, Euro RSCG, Palm Havas and Ogilvy. Among some of his best-known work is “Hippies” for Volkswagen in which aging children of the Flower Power era reminisce over old photographs of a much loved VW van and are then spellbound by the arrival of the new version of the classic vehicle. Mantovani also directed the acclaimed campaign for Longines’ watches featuring Kate Winslet, Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Asian film star Chi Ling Lin, along with the short film Broadway, which screened at the New York Museum of Modern Art….
Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonist and Writer, Dies At 95
Jules Feiffer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer whose prolific output ranged from a long-running comic strip to plays, screenplays and children's books, died Friday. He was 95 and, true to his seemingly tireless form, published his last book just four months ago.
Feiffer's wife, writer JZ Holden, said Tuesday that he died of congestive heart failure at their home in Richfield Springs, New York, and was surrounded by friends, the couple's two cats and his recent artwork.
Holden said her husband had been ill for a couple of years, "but he was sharp and strong up until the very end. And funny."
Artistically limber, Feiffer hopscotched among numerous forms of expression, chronicling the curiosity of childhood, urban angst and other societal currents. To each he brought a sharp wit and acute observations of the personal and political relations that defined his readers' lives.
As Feiffer explained to the Chicago Tribune in 2002, his work dealt with "communication and the breakdown thereof, between men and women, parents and children, a government and its citizens, and the individual not dealing so well with authority."
Feiffer won the United States' most prominent awards in journalism and filmmaking, taking home a 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons and "Munro," an animated short film he wrote, won a 1961 Academy Award. The Library of Congress held a retrospective of his work in 1996.
"My goal is to make people think, to make them feel and, along the way, to make them smile if not laugh," Feiffer told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1998. "Humor seems to me one of the best ways of espousing ideas. It gets people to listen with their guard down."
Feiffer was born on Jan. 26, 1929, in the Bronx. From... Read More