Editorial, finishing, and VFX studio Uppercut has added two editors to its roster. Sean Fazende joins the team in Los Angeles and Milena Z. Petrovic will work globally, with home bases in NYC and Europe.
Uppercut has seen considerable expansion in the last year, with the addition of Lisa Houck as managing director and the studio’s new offices in Atlanta, building upon its New York flagship location. Fazende, who was previously at Cut+Run, joins Uppercut’s West Coast team, which also includes editor Danielle Sclafani.
Fazende grew up in Texas, transfixed by the endless loop of music videos on MTV. His love of storytelling prompted him to attend Boston University’s film school. After graduation, he moved to L.A. to begin his career cutting music videos, working with artists such as Lorde, Selena Gomez, and Calvin Harris. His fast-paced editing style naturally segued him into commercial work for various brands and agencies.
Petrovic grew up in a family of filmmakers in Serbia, where she began editing and directing at the age of 12. She graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and has since won numerous awards for her feature, documentary, and commercial work. She won the FIPRESCI Award for Best Film Editing for the feature The Belgrade Phantom. Her short film Bluebird had its premiere in Cannes, and her commercial work has won awards at such festivals as D&AD, Cannes Lions, Clio, Eurobest, Ciclope, APA, etc. She relishes creative collaboration across a variety of mediums, including fiction, documentary, music videos, and advertising. Uppercut becomes her first U.S. roost.
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More