Showing posts with label "Look Not at the Mountains". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "Look Not at the Mountains". Show all posts
Production Begins
"If I abandon this project I would be a man without dreams and I don't want to live like that: I live my life or I end my life with this project. "-Werner Herzog, said while making Fitzcarraldo
Clement Von Franckenstein
Baron Clement von Franckenstein, the 65-yearold descendant of the original Franckenstein who inspired Mary Shelley's 1818 classic, has been cast as Willsborough, the lead part in our upcoming project “Look Not at the Mountains!”A real life Baron, Clement is the son of the former Austrian Ambassador to the Court of St. James and was written up in the July 2, 2001 issue of People Magazine as one of America's top 50 bachelors.
Since exiling himself to Los Angeles in the late 70’s, Franckenstein has had an illustrious acting career. He portrayed the President of France (Renee-Jean d'Astier) opposite Michael Douglas and Annette Bening in THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT, and co-starred in EVENING STAR with Shirley Maclaine.
No Longer Monkeys
“Africa will write its own history, and it will be, to the north and to the south of the Sahara, a history of glory and dignity.”
-- Patrice Lumumba
Amid all this mumbo jumbo, the real Lumumba has been almost forgotten. He was, of course, a violent, often eloquent anticolonialist, and an infectiously fanatic orator. At the 1960 independence ceremony, he seized the microphone to tell Belgium's King Baudouin that "from today, we are no longer your monkeys." He was also the first Congolese politician to think beyond tribal boundaries, the founder (in 1959) of the Congo's first semi-national political movement, its first real pan-African nationalist—and its first Prime Minister. But at the time of his death, most of his countrymen had either never heard of him or hated him.
He was, among other things, a convicted embezzler (of some $2,500 in postal funds), a monumental drunkard, an almost compulsive liar, and an addicted hemp smoker. More important, he was a disaster as Prime Minister. Although his party barely controlled less than one-fourth of the seats in Parliament, he refused to make the political compromises necessary to form a working coalition government, quickly alienated almost every important power base in the Congo. Headstrong, unstable and perpetually frenzied, Lumumba never even tried to govern. His army rebelled less than a week after he took office; his Belgian civil servants fled in terror; vital provinces tried to secede; and the land, neither administered nor policed, reverted to darkness. Howling all the while about white imperialism, Patrice Lumumba himself did not hesitate to sell the exploitation rights to the Congo's vast resources to a fast-talking American promoter.
Time Magazine
Friday Dec. 25, 1964
Panavision Grant
"Look Not at the Mountains" has received the Panavision New Filmmaker Award, making it our second project that will be produced through their generous grant. The first films of Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, and Jared Hess were also supported through this program. It's a great option for young filmmakers who refuse to compromise and go digital.
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.
"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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