"I am poorer not richer because of the Congo."
-King Leopold II of Belgium
Scorsese
"I prefer the escapism of fantasy, rather than the escapism of incredible sentimentality. What I'm afraid of is pandering to tastes that are superficial. There's no depth anymore. What appears to be depth is often a facile character study."
-- Martin Scorsese
-- Martin Scorsese
Location, Location, Location
When European missionaries first arrived in Kenya, they convinced the people that they were wrong in their belief that the holy spirits lived atop Mount Kenya. They told the Africans that they must "look not at the mountains" for God, rather they should "look above".
Above are pictures from our first visit to the shooting location of our film "Look Not at the Mountains!"
Casting Director Sheryl Levine has just signed on to cast the film. She's an amazing casting director and worked on our last big project, LIBERATION.
Love and Hope
“If you're not coming from love and hope in your heart, then you're nothing. If you're coming from ego, there's no truth in ego and self-glorification. That's certainly not the goal and that's certainly not the place to invest your energy as a person....Love and hope. That's the kind of person I try to become. And I have to practice that every day because I’m not that naturally. I was raised a different way, and I have to struggle really hard to be that person."
-Gallo
Art and Sincerity
I want to do with cinema,what Yanni does with music - it is completely sincere, unapologetic and straight from the heart. In following this inspiration, his music is classic, timeless and international. It is the antithesis of trend. It transcends trend, because it rejects hipness; It functions completely independently.
Michael Moore
Poor Trailer? I think so. Bad Movie -- Most probably.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/untitledmichaelmooreproject/
THE STONING
Just saw the premiere of Cyrus Nowrasteh's (The Day Reagan Was Shot, The Path to 9/11) latest film The Stoning of Soraya M. at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Powerful and controversial film. Exploitative and manipulative?
Check it out for yourself:
http://www.thestoning.com/theaters/
Digital Cinema
"My feeling is that with digital, we're entering into a revolutionary period....The possibility of watching films on mobile phones I think is tragic. To show films on a little screen like that is an utter absurdity."
--Constatin Costa-Gavras
--Constatin Costa-Gavras
"Look Not at the Mountains!"
In 2008, we were commissioned by Six Point Films, the production company of entrepreneur Phil Blazer and Academy-Award winning Producer Branko Lustig (Schindler's List, Gladiator) to a pen a historical script entitled "Falasha". "Falasha" told the true story of a complex and charismatic man, French explorer Jacques Faitlovitch, and how he "discovered" the black Jews of Abyssinia, whom he believed to be the Lost Children of Zion. Faitlovitch was a provocative figure, and his story raised a lot of interesting questions about colonialism, adventurism and Jewish identity.
But instead of exploring the political elements, we sought to construct a deeply spiritual and religious film. One that was always on level with the orthodox ideologies of our protagonist.
Unfortunately, after a year of research, writing and editing, the script was done, but the financing (a co-production of Israel and Ethiopia) suddenly dropped amidst the global financial crisis.
We'd already grown so close to this world however - the world of turn of the century Africa, and the place of the European colonialist within it - that we wanted to do something to bring our imaginings to life.
I thusly present our next short-film project --
"Look Not at the Mountains!"
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