Jillian Mayer
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Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva Premiere #PostModem Online
Miami-based filmmakers Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva — two of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces — have been touring the festival circuit with their short film, #PostModem, which they describe like this: “[It’s] a comedic satirical sci-fi pop-musical based on the theories of Ray Kurzweil and other futurists. It’s the story of two Miami girls and how they deal with the technological singularity, as told through a series of cinematic tweets.” For the first time this insanely infectious riff on virality and uploaded consciousness is online. Watch it above, and try to keep its K-Pop-styled song out of your head.
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 6, 2014 -
Samah Tokmachi Finds Creativity at the Sundance New Frontier Story Lab
Launched in 2011, the Sundance New Frontier Story Lab is an intensive program for artists working “at the convergence of film, art, media, live performance, music and technology.” This Fall, it completed its third Lab, bringing together artists with an impressive variety of mentors from all of these fields. Among the folks traveling to the Sundance Resort was filmmaker Samah Tokmachi (Living in a Global Society) in the role of Creative Observer. Sundance invited him to make a short video, posted above, “in hopes that his reflections would enrich the wider discourse about media innovation and the future of storytelling.” […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 31, 2013 -
Jillian Mayer on How to Hide from Cameras
25 New Face Jillian Mayer has long been attuned to the impact of technology on identity and personal expression. Here, she offers a helpful tutorial to those worried about biometric tracking, face recognition and the profusion of surveillance cameras on our streets.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 14, 2013 -
Now Online: Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva’s Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke
One of the most brilliantly out-there shorts of recent years, Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva’s Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke has finally made it online, and you’d be a fool not to check it out. It’s the film that put the pair on the map when it played at the festival circuit in 2012, and then later justified their inclusion our “25 New Faces” list last year. Calling the film “both very smart and gleefully nuts,” this is what Scott wrote on Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke in his profile of Mayer and Leyva for the […]
by Nick Dawson on May 29, 2013 -
Now Online: Lucas Leyva and Jillian Mayer’s Insane Adventures of Christopher Bosh in the Multiverse!
The product of the brilliantly inventive and mischievous minds of 2012 “25 New Faces” Lucas Leyva and Jillian Mayer, the animated intergalactic basketball fantasia Adventures of Christopher Bosh in the Multiverse! premiered last December at the Borscht Film Festival. The movie played at the Miami event run by Leyva and Mayer despite the pair having received letters from the NBA and Miami Heat player Bosh — played in the film by another 2012 “New Face,” Terence Nance — demanding the film be suppressed due to “an infringement of [Bosh’s] publicity rights, privacy rights, and common law trademark rights.” Now, wonderfully, the film […]
by Nick Dawson on Apr 24, 2013 -
Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva at SXSW
Jillian Lucas and Lucas Leyva, two of our “25 New Faces” from 2012, are back at SXSW with their new short #PostModem after making their name at the fest last year with the mind-blowing Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke. Here they talk with Romain Thomassin as part of the Motionmaker series of Young Guns interviews with emerging filmmakers.
by Nick Dawson on Mar 12, 2013 -
25 New Faces Update: At SXSW and Beyond
There’s been a lot going on with our current crop of 25 New Faces, so I thought I’d do a quick catchup of recent goings on. Firstly, four feature projects by 2012 alums are playing at this year’s SXSW Film Festival: there’s a world premiere for Ornana’s first narrative feature, Euphonia, while Bassam Tariq and Omar Mullick’s evocative documentary These Birds Walk (a world premiere at True/False later this month), Hannah Fidell’s A Teacher (which was actually shot in Austin) and Penny Lane and Brian L. Frye’s archival doc Our Nixon will continue their fest circuit runs there. (Incidentally, Lane and […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 7, 2013 -
Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva Explore the Singularity with “MegaMega Upload”
Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva screen their latest short, #PostModem, at the Sundance Film Festival this week, but today they’ve dropped “MegaMega Upload,” the music video that takes over the movie at one point. The filmmakers say of #PostModem, “[it’s] a comedic satirical sci-fi pop-musical based on the theories of Ray Kurzweil and other futurists. It’s the story of two Miami girls and how they deal with the technological singularity, as told through a series of cinematic tweets.” I saw the short at Borscht 8 this year; Mayer and Leyva’s lo-fi riff on uploaded consciousness is super smart. Indeed, you […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 14, 2013 -
“25 New Faces” Update: Our Nixon at MoMA, Kickstarting F to 7th, Borscht Commissions, Mayer Erases the Web
I’ve not been posting as regularly recently as much of my focus has been on the redesigned Filmmaker website, which will be launching in the very near future. But, on this quiet Friday afternoon, I thought I’d take the opportunity to provide a few quick updates on the current class of filmmakers in our “25 New Faces,” who are a very productive bunch. Firstly, New Yorkers should head to MoMA this Sunday, October 28, for The White House Home Movies: Richard Nixon on Super-8, a screening which is part of the 10th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation. There will be clips […]
by Nick Dawson on Oct 26, 2012 -
PHOTOBLOGGING THE “25 NEW FACES” IN TACOMA
The funny thing about film festivals is that there never seems to be enough time to talk about the films you’ve just seen. Distribution strategies, yes, industry gossip, most definitely, but the actual creative decisions and approaches involved in making the films themselves – barely! So the Grand Cinema’s mini-festival celebrating Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in Tacoma, WA, last month felt like a truly rare treat. Bringing together 14 of the actors and filmmakers or filmmaking teams on the list, including myself and Katherine Fairfax Wright, my directing partner on Call Me Kuchu, The Grand Cinema scheduled […]
by Malika Zouhali-Worrall on Sep 5, 2012
