Focus on Film: Trends in conscious filmmaking with Danette Wolpert, Executive Director of ILLUMINATE Film Festival What trends do you see in film today? Aside from lots of superheroes, Alicia Vikander being Hollywood’s new “It” girl (seven films in one year, including Ex Machina and The Danish Girl), and the abundance of dinosaurs (Jurassic World, The [...]
Jessica Biel stars in Diane Bell's latest film Bleeding Heart. Written and directed by Diane Bell. It’s refreshing to have the practice of yoga featured prominently in the storyline of a film. Pitting the peacefulness of yoga against violence and greed, the film Bleeding Heart asks: How far will a good-hearted yogi go to defend [...]
Reflections on a Film with a Powerful Story to Tell By Elissa Harris Actor Sean Penn introduced the film India’s Daughter at the screening I attended. He likened watching the provocative film to getting an MRI: an uncomfortable but sometimes necessary diagnostic technique. British filmmaker Leslee Udwin decided to make India’s Daughter while watching [...]
Realized by Laurie Anderson As America’s best-known experimental performance artist, Laurie Anderson has made her mark in many forms of media: multimedia stage performances, seven books, multiple studio albums and soundtracks, visual art museum installations. And, yes, filmmaking. Laurie’s meditative nonfiction film, Heart of a Dog, is an impressionistic musing on love, life, and death reinforced by evocative [...]
The insidious crime of cyberbullying is becoming ever more pervasive in our current digital age; studies show that more than half of adolescents today actually engage in bullying or have themselves been victims. Public shaming is practically becoming a sport, and students can be harassed not only in the schoolyard but online 24/7, with [...]
'The Answer': Seeking Truth at the Awareness Film Festival 'The Answer' will play at The Awareness Film Festival on Sept. 20 at 12 p.m. It’s been an inspiring and awakening week for many at the Awareness Film Festival in Los Angeles. The festival opened September 10 and has drawn hundreds to see powerful [...]
Radicalize Director Sam Slovick Talks Skid Row and Kriya Yoga LA YOGA: Where did the initial call come from to direct the documentary Radicalize and follow the group of people catalyzing the Occupy Movement? Sam Slovick: I was working as a journalist in LA in October 2011 and I had a couple columns in [...]
Roger Allers celebrates the human spirit in his animated feature film, Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. Some of my all-time favorite films are animated features. A new film has been added to my list. One of literature’s most beloved works (it has sold more than 100 million copies in 40 languages), Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, has [...]
What happens to a brilliant child who is entirely misunderstood by his parents? What changes inside of us when our dreams are disregarded and our potential underestimated? These are some of the questions addressed in the new film about beloved author Paulo Coelho (who famously penned The Alchemist and a long list of other best-sellers). [...]
David Lipsky, as a Rolling Stone reporter, accompanied author David Foster Wallace on the last leg of the book tour for Wallace’s unexpected 1996 bestseller Infinite Jest. In this insightful film adaptation based on Lipsky’s chronicle of those five days, filmmaker James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now) portrays the struggles that the creative genius had with [...]