Category Archives: In the Works

The team behind the Sundance award-winning BLOOD BROTHER turn their attention to another man attempting to make a difference in he lives of children on the margins.

Gennadiy Mokhnenko has made it his mission to rescue the abandoned kids of Ukraine – the more than 100,000 street children who struggle to survive, often addicted to alcohol and other drugs. In his city of Mariupal, Gennadiy runs an orphanage, but in the face of often corrupt official channels, it’s hard to help as many kids as he’d like to. In response, he’s taken matters into his own hands, roaming the city at night and abducting children, forcing them to go through detox. Using a decade of archival material as well as their own original footage, director/editor Steve Hoover, working again with producer Danny Yourd and cinematographer John Pope, reveal the complexity, and controversy, behind Gennadiy’s extreme activism. Continue reading →

Can a background extra use an appearance in a Super Bowl commercial to become a leading man?

Like so many others, Jesse Heiman moved to Los Angeles hoping to become successful in the entertainment business. Lacking contacts, training, and a job, he signed up for background extra work. His distinctive, unusual looks have led to steady work ever since, garnering split-second appearances in the backgrounds of scores of popular films and TV series. After a Swedish man began to notice Heiman popping up in various films, he compiled these appearances in a YouTube video that heralded the young actor as the “World’s Greatest Extra.” That video went viral, leading to a guest appearance on Leno, and, most significantly, a Super Bowl commercial for GoDaddy. With this set up, director/producer Nick Weis and producer/editor Emily Carroll follow Heiman for the next year, to see if this newfound attention can be harnessed into lasting fame, or if instead he’s destined to return to the shadowy backgrounds while others take the spotlight. Continue reading →

As Tunisia heads to its first free presidential election, can secular and religious forces manage to work together to create a democracy that satisfies all its citizens?

The Tunisian Revolution of 2010-2011 is recognized as the beginning of the Arab Spring, but as has been the case in other post-revolutionary nations, the road to true freedom is not instantaneous, especially in a country that has never known democracy. To make matters even more complicated, how will the region’s deep-seated religious beliefs come into play? This is the question facing the protagonists of director/producer Jessie Deeter’s film, which follows Bassem Bouguerra, a secular revolutionary, and Jawhara Ettis, a university professor and member of the moderate Islamist party. Even under ousted President Ben Ali’s dictatorial rule, Tunisia espoused secular freedom, but some Tunisians seek a turn to more fundamentalist policies to bring the country in line with Islamic law. As the country tries to set forth its future course with a general election later this year, Deeter and her Tunisian-born co-producer Sara Maamouri follow Bassem and Jawhara to reveal what democracy will look like in a country pulled in separate directions. Continue reading →

An inside look at the New Yorker‘s signature cartoons, the artists who create them, and the editorial team who bring them to readers.

Inspired by the magazine’s weekly Caption Contest, director/producer Leah Wolchok, working with producer Davina Pardo, set out to learn more about the cartoonists who played such a vital role in distinguishing the New Yorker on the stands. Gaining access not only to a core group of illustrators, but also to cartoon editor Bob Mankoff and his staff, the filmmakers go behind the panel to explore the history of this feature, which used to be a staple in magazine publishing, and to gain insight into the process artists go through to try to get their sometimes clever, sometimes quizzical gags into print. Continue reading →

The strange case of two men whose lives intersect over a severed human foot and a barbecue, from the producer of THE KING OF KONG and UNDEFEATED and directed by his protege.

When Shannon Whisnant bought a barbecue smoker at an auction in rural North Carolina in 2007, he was surprised to find a severed human foot within it. Looking to capitalize on the media attention generated by this improbable discovery, Shannon tried to turn it into a tourist attraction, only to subsequently find himself involved in a lawsuit for its possession against John Wood, an amputee who lost the leg in a plane crash that claimed his father’s life. Producer Ed Cunningham began documenting the story only to come up against financing stone walls. When his assistant Bryan Carberry learned of the project, he convinced Cunningham to let him take over as director to try to complete the story, which took on even more bizarre – and apparently even inspiring – twists as time passed. Continue reading →

An exploration of African American support for a political movement that has a mainstream reputation for reactionary and even racist beliefs.

In its four years of organizing, the Tea Party movement has displayed remarkable growth and surprising influence, capitalizing on the frustration and desperation borne of the economic recession to mobilize a not-insignificant population to vote a new brand of Conservative politician into office. The development of the movement as a reaction to Barack Obama’s election and policies, its connection at times to fringe groups like the birthers, and damning statements and actions by key figures have led to the widespread public perception that the Tea Party is motivated by racism. At the same time, the Tea Party has still managed to attract African American supporters. Recognizing the dissonance between the movement’s mainstream portrayal and its aspects that have proven desirable to certain African Americans, director Kevin J Dotson and producer Katy Jordan seek a fuller understanding. Their film presents an opportunity for Tea Party affiliated African Americans to speak for themselves and present a more nuanced picture of the movement as a whole. Continue reading →

A British DJ and radio show creator joins with the producers of THE KING’S SPEECH to reveal the stories behind the forgotten record albums of the American South.

Motivated by a broken heart to leave the UK for the US, DJ/writer/artist Joseph Fletcher began a roadtrip through the deep South over a decade ago, stopping along the way at thriftstores to pick up the odd record albums that caught his eye. The closest to fame most of these records’ featured musicians, evangelists, and ventriloquists likely reached is through emailed-around “World’s Worst Album Covers” links, but Fletcher saw something more – an opportunity to explore what motivated these individuals and to expose their stories and their forgotten music, to larger audiences. Having already crated a BBC radio show about some of his rediscoveries, Fletcher now turns to the visual medium of documentary, partnered with British production company Bedlam Productions. Continue reading →

The director of INFORMANT profiles the efforts of once wrongly imprisoned men to exonerate other innocent men.

Having themselves experienced the nightmare of incarceration for crimes they didn’t commit, and the joy of finally being vindicated, the subjects of Jamie Meltzer’s film have banded together to help others in similar straits. Going by the film’s titular name, a group of exonerated African-American men form a detective agency, funneling their hard-fought experiences in the criminal justice system to investigate, and hopefully solve, other cases of wrongful conviction. Beyond the challenge of their first case – overturning a 75-year sentence for a $618 theft – the men have to learn how to do their new jobs and to adjust to life on the outside. Continue reading →

Race, gender, sexuality, and class are implicated when African American lesbians are charged as a gang after they attempt to defend themselves from a stranger’s aggressive advances.

In NYC’s West Village on a hot summer night, a man first attempted to flirt with, then homophobically accosted, a group of young women from Newark NJ. Although the women tried to walk away, he egged them on, and the situation turned violent – by the end of the altercation, the man suffered stab wounds, and some of the women bore bruises and other injuries. Only the women were arrested, with media labeling them as a “gang” and a “wolf pack,” the man was deemed their victim, and “The New Jersey 4” went on to be sentenced harshly, despite their claims of self-defense. Director blair doroshwalther attempts to make sense of the incident, and, more importantly, its aftermath, revealing how a matrix of factors contributed to the way the story was reported, and to the (in)justice that was meted out. Continue reading →

With the transformative threat of industry and climate change on their horizon, an Arctic island people try to maintain their traditional way of life.

Situated more than a hundred miles above the Arctic Circle, Alaska’s Kivalina is home to 386 people, Inupiat natives who have lived on the barrier island for generations. Bearing the brunt of climate change, the island is vanishing, losing ground to sea wave erosion, and forcing its people to plan a costly relocation. Simultaneously, and contributory to these radical changes, as claimed in the island’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil and other industrial interests, is the exploitation of their surrounding natural resources and the pollution that has resulted. Against this backdrop, and over the course of five years, director Gina Abatemarco has documented the people caught in the middle. Taking an intimate, observational approach, the film seeks to reveal the everyday lives of the Kivalina people as they contend with these extraordinary developments that threaten their very future – a harbinger of a similar fate facing other populations around the world. Continue reading →