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A series of scientists (and, for good measure, a few nonscientists) travel to a plot of Maine land they have never seen before. One-by-one, through all four seasons, they walk the land and describe what they see. What unfolds is an unusual meditation upon the human relationship to the natural world and the power of different ways of seeing.
Emojis (Japanese for “picture character”) have emerged as a way for billions to communicate. Their widespread use and ability to convey complex and subtle feelings could mean the world is on the cusp of discovering a new language. Directors Martha Shane and Ian Cheney take us deep into the world of picture characters, from the private non-profit international consortium that standardized emoji offerings and decides on the introduction of new ones, to the campaigns for new emojis such as those depicting menstruation and Argentinian mate, and to the very beginnings of emojis in Japan.
Picture Character follows the path of smiling poops and heart-eyed faces, tackles the development of skin tones, and tracks the evolution of the global digital language. Like a good use of a chin scratching emoji, the documentary is both thought-provoking and fun, and it will insure that viewers never look at another emoji, or think of language itself, the same way again. (Sudeep Sharma)
A visually provocative film shot over 20 years, BALIAN (THE HEALER) is an engrossing fable of globalization. It tracks the remarkable rise and fall of a Balinese healer and priest after he is discovered by Western tourists.
“A magical portrait of a one-of-a-kind Indonesian trickster/healer.”
-Alan Berliner (Nobody’s Business, Wide Awake, The Sweetest Sound)
Check out the trailer below:
Daniel McGuire is a filmmaker with two decades of experience in feature films, documentary, electronic press kits, web-based media, multi-camera event shoots, ethnographic, industrial and training films. He is based in the Boston area where he has covered stories for Good Morning America and Inside Edition as a Field Producer, and for Al Jazeera English as a Correspondent. He frequently covers stories related to Health, Science, Technology and the environment at Harvard and MIT.
McGuire has worked as a correspondent for ABC News in Indonesia, where he covered politics and environmental issues. Fluent in Indonesian, he directed and produced the feature documentary “Crash Course: The Indonesian Student Revolt” (selected for the Rotterdam Film Festival). BALIAN (THE HEALER), premiered in August 2018. He has taught film and video production at the University of Northern Illinois and teaches seminars in video production for journalists. McGuire holds a BA from Wesleyan University, an MA from Northern Illinois University, and an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
https://storyboard.vcfa.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/MasterJamCard_4H.jpg15002100Aja Zoeckleinhttps://storyboard.vcfa.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/VCFA_logo_nbkgd-300x167.pngAja Zoecklein2018-06-20 20:45:352018-06-20 20:48:01Alumnus James Curry's ('17) documentary MASTERJAM screens at the UFVA Conference
REGGAE BOYZ, a film by VCFA MFA in Film faculty member Till Schauder, has it’s European premiere at the Krakow Film Festival (2018) this week. The film is nominated for Best Documentary at the festival. The film screens Wednesday May 30, 1:30 p.m. @ Pod Baranami Cinema and Friday June 1, 8:00 p.m. @ ARS (followed by a Q&A).
“Without a doubt one of the funnest and most entertaining documentaries in years” filmdienst.de
Plagued with one of the highest murder rates in the world, Jamaica tries to inspire its populace by qualifying their national soccer team – the “Reggae Boyz” – for the World Cup. When their efforts start to fall short, a colorful German coach enters the scene and forms an unlikely alliance with legendary reggae musicians and a Rastafarian factory worker to unite Jamaica beyond the soccer pitch.
“The easy touch of this film never conceals that at its core this is about the struggle of the third world.”
https://storyboard.vcfa.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/reggae-boyz-wide.png360640Aja Zoeckleinhttps://storyboard.vcfa.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/VCFA_logo_nbkgd-300x167.pngAja Zoecklein2018-05-31 12:45:552018-05-31 15:38:31Till Schauder's REGGAE BOYZ, European premiere at Krakow Film Festival, nominated for Best Documentary
Award-winning filmmaker, and VCFA MFA in Film faculty member, Till Schauder has been traversing the globe with his film WHEN GOD SLEEPS. In addition to its bustling festival showing, we are excited to announce WHEN GOD SLEEPS will have its US broadcast television premiere on this season of Independent Lens on PBS on April 2, 2018, at 10:00 PM EST.
Additionally, be sure to have a listen to Schauder’s conversation with Art More Than Ever podcast host Erica Heilman where Schauder discusses the process of creating documentary films and how he handles working with challenging subjects.
“I’m very greedy as a filmmaker…I’m a hunter-gatherer. I know from experience that with this massive amounts of footage you get nuggets…that people think are too good to be true almost.”
About the film:
“ ‘My songs didn’t make me famous. The fatwa did.’ WHEN GOD SLEEPS unfolds against the backdrop of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks in the Bataclan concert venue and European right-wing backlash against Middle-Eastern refugees. It deftly weaves the journey of exiled Iranian musician Shahin Najafi with historical context and intimate biographical detail, rooting the narrative in Najafi’s immediate and unavoidable reality, living under a fatwa issued against him by hardline Shiite clerics. As Najafi juggles a personal life and budding romance in Cologne, far from loved ones, with a professional career whose high profile may cost him his life, he spars with bandmates who are ambivalent about the peril his status places on their lives, and battles German police who refuse to see the death threat on his head as a legitimate danger. With camerawork that underlines the intimate aspect of this film, we bear witness to the life of an outspoken artist defying powerful men intent on silencing him.”
TILL SCHAUDER Writer, Director TILL SCHAUDER’s feature debut SANTA SMOKES which he wrote, co-directed and starred in, won several awards, among them Best Director at the Tokyo International Film Festival and the Studio Hamburg Newcomer Award. In 2012, Till completed his critically acclaimed first documentary THE IRAN JOB, which was released worldwide, mentioned as an Oscar contender and shortlisted for a German Academy Award in 2014. His latest documentary WHEN GOD SLEEPS premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival 2017 and is currently playing at film festivals around the world. WHEN GOD SLEEPS won the “Cinema for Peace Award” for Most Valuable Documentary of the Year during this year’s Berlinale, and the “Golden Heynal Award” in the International DocFilmMusic Competition at this year’s Krakow Film Festival. WHEN GOD SLEEPS opened theatrically in Germany and Japan in October. The U.S. theatrical release is scheduled for early 2018, followed by a nationwide broadcast on PBS/Independent Lens and a North American online release on Amazon. Till also recently completed WARRIORS OF FAITH, a feature documentary about Iraqi refugees in Germany combating ISIS through performance arts for which he just won a German Emmy. The film also won the “ARD Top of the Docs” Award and was a nominee for the Prix Europa. Till has a side career in acting. He appeared with Kate Winslet in the HBO Series “Mildred Pierce” and in Martin Scorsese’s HBO Series “Vinyl”. His production company, which he runs with his producing partner and wife Sara Nodjoumi, is based in Brooklyn.
SARA NODJOUMI Producer
SARA NODJOUMI is an independent film producer and film festival programmer. She and Till Schauder most recently collaborated on WHEN GOD SLEEPS, which is co-produced by ITVS, executive produced by Motto Pictures, Catapult Film Fund, and Fork Films, and supported by numerous foundations including the Sundance Institute, Jerome Foundation, and NYSCA. The film premiered in competition at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival. It later went on to win the Golden Heynal award for Best Music Documentary at the Krakow Film Festival, as well as the Most Valuable Film of the Year award at Cinema for Peace in Berlin. Nodjoumi and Schauder are currently working on the feature documentary REGGAE BOYZ, which is in post-production. From 2004-2009, Nodjoumi worked at the Tribeca Film Festival as an Associate Programmer and is currently the Artistic Director of the New York Sephardic Film Festival. She also produced the feature documentary THE IRAN JOB, which was released theatrically and on Netflix worldwide. In Germany, the film was shortlisted for a German Academy Award. For THE IRAN JOB, Nodjoumi managed two of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns of all time. In 2016, she was invited to attend the Sundance Creative Producer’s Summit and in 2017 she was an IFP Cannes Producer’s Network Fellow.Running Sneakers Store | New Jordans – Air Jordan 2021 Release Dates , Gov
https://storyboard.vcfa.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/when-god-sleeps-02.jpg413620Aja Zoeckleinhttps://storyboard.vcfa.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/VCFA_logo_nbkgd-300x167.pngAja Zoecklein2018-03-30 17:05:342018-03-30 17:18:08Film faculty Till Schauder's film, WHEN GOD SLEEPS, premieres on PBS April 2nd, 2018, plus an interview on the "Art More Than Ever" podcast
THE MOST UNKNOWN, a documentary film directed by current VCFA MFA in Film student Ian Cheney, premieres today (March 16, 2018) at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen. THE MOST UNKNOWN, is a “scientific exploration of the unknown, where the greatest mysteries of physics and nature can be found at the bottom of the ocean and in outer space.”
Ian Cheney’s film demonstrates how a meeting of researchers can take place across disciplines, and it is a magnificent portrait of the desire of modern research to understand the unknown and make it tangible. A project, which brings us all the way where research is not about results and peer reviews, but about approaching adventure. -CPH:DOX
Check out the trailer below and this Motherboard write up to learn more!
Ian Cheney is an Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker. His most recent films include THE SEARCH FOR GENERAL TSO, released by IFC Films / Sundance Selects, and the forthcoming documentary film BLUESPACE, which explores the terraforming of Mars and the waterways of New York City. Ian is in his final year here at VCFA, and we are thrilled to see his thesis work, as well as his future endeavors!spy offers | NIKE
https://storyboard.vcfa.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/THE-MOST-UNKNOWN.jpeg6731200Aja Zoeckleinhttps://storyboard.vcfa.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/VCFA_logo_nbkgd-300x167.pngAja Zoecklein2018-03-16 17:49:212018-03-28 16:32:37Student Spotlight: Ian Cheney's film THE MOST UNKNOWN premieres March 16th, 2018
Current VCFA MFA in Film student, George Nicholas’s short experimental documentary ANTIGONE, a twelve minute meditation on life, death, presence, religion, family, emptiness, and light centered upon the death of the filmmaker’s beloved Mother, has several scheduled screening this Spring (2018). Nicholas created this film while here at VCFA, and writes,
I spent the first two semesters working on an experimental documentary about my mother’s death from cancer in 2014. I had made brief overtures at starting the film before I arrived at VCFA, but I’m glad that I continued it while here, or I would have given up on it for the potential scale of it and the gut-wrenching emotional journey that met every editing session. With the good advisement of some truly wonderful faculty, and the keen insight of a fellow student… I was committed to finishing it, and it had its world premiere at the Cyprus International Film Festival in Paphos, Cyprus in June (2017), where it received the Nostimon Imar Award, an award given to the film that best embodies the sense of “nostimon imar,” from a passage in Homer’s Odyssey, loosely translated as “the day of the sweet return to one’s homeland,” a film for the Greek and Cypriot diaspora.
Three Rivers Film Festival, Pittsburgh, PA, (2018 dates not yet posted) Three Rivers Film Festival only accepted 10 shorts, and ANTIGONE was one of them. Nicholas calls his return to Pittsburgh a “bittersweet homecoming, as most of the 8mm footage was shot there in my childhood and before.”
Additionally, Nicholas’s short animated film, SMOKE N SUDS, also completed while here at VCFA, will have it’s world premiere at the 13th Athens ANIMFEST in Athens, Greece, March 15 – 18th, 2018! SMOKE N SUDS will also be playing at the Maine International Film Festival in Waterville, Maine on July 14th and July 19th, 2018. SMOKE N SUDS is a lo-fi animated film (reminiscent of early Jim Jarmusch) that follows two punks who meet at a laundromat in late 80’s Hell’s Kitchen NYC.
Finally, 7 SPLINTERS IN TIME, a film that Nicholas helped produce and was the DoP of, had its world premiere at Cinequest in San Jose on March 3rd, 2018.
Horror Society writes of the film, 7 SPLINTERS IN TIME is an intricately constructed, visually arresting, graphically exotic and groundbreaking lo-fi sci-fi detective story that mashes up Phillip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler.
Congrats George, we are thrilled for you!
More:
George Nicholas is an award-winning New York – based filmmaker and director of photography. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to first-generation Greek immigrants, picked up his father’s love for photography at age 7, and wrote and directed his first play at 11. He studied drama at the University of Texas, Arlington, moved to NYC in 1998, worked as a sound technician for Off-Broadway Theater and as a roadie, working with bands like the Rolling Stones, before moving a bit north to attend the Conservatory of Film at the State University of New York at Purchase, where he graduated with a BFA in Film Production. He has worked as a cinematographer professionally since 1992, and his work has been shown worldwide on air and in festivals. George has produced and directed music videos, including Elizabeth Cook’s “Sunday Morning,” which aired on VH-1, GAC, and CMT. His 2004 short film, “Exact Fare,” won the CINE Golden Eagle Award, and his most recent film, “Antigone” won the Nostimon Imar award (for films of the diaspora) at its premiere at the 2017 Cyprus International Film Festival. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Radio, Television, Film at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, and prior to that taught at and was the Technical Director of Film and New Media at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. He currently resides in Mamaroneck, New York with his wife, Marie, their son Peter, and two cats. He is a bassist and vocalist for the J.D. Southard Band and the upright bassist for The Quarter Moon. Nicholas will graduate from VCFA MFA in Film April 2018.
https://storyboard.vcfa.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/gnicholasheadshot.jpg538800Aja Zoeckleinhttps://storyboard.vcfa.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/VCFA_logo_nbkgd-300x167.pngAja Zoecklein2018-03-15 15:54:342018-09-21 20:58:39Student Spotlight: George Nicholas's films ANTIGONE, SMOKE N SUDS, and 7 SPLINTERS IN TIME
Synopsis: After being smuggled into Trinidad and Tobago to be with her brother, Zhenzhen, an illegal Chinese immigrant, discovers the true cost of her arrival.
About the film, Upczak tells Sydney Levine of Medium, “The movie has taken shape in a way I feel very excited about, from the storytelling to the acting to the cinematography and score. I’m also proud to be telling a story about life experiences that are not commonly represented: that of immigrants, the disenfranchised, the desperate, or another way to view them: the strong.” To read more from this interview pop on over to Sydney’s blog.
MADELINE’S MADELINE, a film written and directed by VCFA MFA in Film faculty member Josephine Decker, made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, January 18th-28th, 2018. MADELINE’S MADELINE was selected in the NEXT category, which Sundance distinguishes as, “Pure, bold works distinguished by an innovative, forward-thinking approach to storytelling… Digital technology paired with unfettered creativity promises that the films in this section will shape a “greater” next wave in American cinema.”
Synopsis: Madeline got the part! She’s going to play the lead in a theater piece! Except the lead wears sweatpants like Madeline’s. And has a cat like Madeline’s. And is holding a steaming hot iron next to her mother’s face – like Madeline is.
IndieWire, has called MADELINE’S MADELINE a “mind-scrambling masterpiece… one of the freshest and most exciting films of the 21st century.”
Check out this great clip of Decker and her cast discussing the film at Sundance:
It’s always exciting when a filmmaker who has generated acclaim on the festival circuit finally lands at Sundance, whether it’s Sean Baker with “Tangerine” or Andrew Bujalski with “Computer Chess.” This year, one of the notable directors making her Sundance debut is Josephine Decker, the experimental filmmaker whose intense psycho-sexual thriller 2013 “Butter on the Latch” was a sleeper hit on the circuit. Now she’s in NEXT with a somewhat more traditional movie, “Madeline’s Madeline,” a reportedly hypnotic drama about a young woman keen on landing the lead role in a rather unorthodox theater piece. The cast includes Miranda July and Molly Parker, but the titular star is New Jersey native Helena Howard, who may be a genuine Sundance discovery. “It’s a concentrated storyline and she really pulls it off,” Groth said of Decker’s direction. “It looks different from her other films but her authorial voice comes through as well.” -Eric Kohn, IndieWire
Decker has received previous acclaim for her films, BUTTER ON THE LATCH and THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY. Congrats Josephine! We can’t wait to see MADELINE’S MADELINE!
Current MFA in Film student, Lex Lybrand, just dropped the trailer for his thesis film project, MAYBE SHOWER. Written and directed by Lybrand, MAYBE SHOWER stars Kelsey Thomas (SUMMER LEAGUE), Rachel DeRouen (GLASS), and Megan Simon (INDOOR CAT). With Carlos O’Leary (THE TROLLS), Jeff Pearson (HOME REMEDY), Nathan Ehrmann (THE TROLLS), and Caitlin French.
Ash, Shannon, and Wendy are all late. You know… LATE. As their collective anxiety grows, they band together to face their fears, confront the potential fathers, and egg a car or two. All part of the world’s first MAYBE SHOWER.
On October 26th, 2016, Lybrand wrote the following on the “Maybe Shower” blog, and we just had to share it here because, well, it brings us great pride:
I’m sitting in a dorm room in Montpelier, Vermont just a couple of days before Halloween. There’s snow on the ground, I can see my breath in my room, and I’m almost out of coffee. I haven’t been this happy in a very long time.
This is the last day of my first week at VCFA’s MFA in Film residency. I entered this program with no idea what I would work on while I’m here… but now I know. I’m excited to announce that I have begun work on my next feature screenplay, and I plan to take it from conception to reality during this 2 year program… This is gonna be fun.
MAYBE SHOWER will screen this April at our spring residency and will be hitting the festival circuit soon. Visit the MAYBE SHOWER site to learn more. We can’t wait to see this one! Congrats Lex!
Check out the trailer below. (See if you can spot another one of our talented students in the film, Mr. Kris Atkinson. We love to see our people crewing for each other!)
