When my creative partner Takeshi Fukunaga summarily told me he wanted to shoot his first feature film, Out of My Hand, in the country of Liberia, I was skeptical. He and I run a Brooklyn-based production company, TELEVISION, and neither of us was particularly well-versed in Africa, let alone in the mysterious and contradistinct country of Liberia, whose two successive civil wars (the last of which ended only ten years ago) were preposterously vicious in size and scope. At the time, Takeshi had been inspired by a yet-to-completed documentary film by the late Ryo Murakami, his brother-in-law, who’d visited the […]
by Donari Braxton on May 15, 2014(The Ambassador had its world premiere at IDFA 2011 and its U.S. premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. It was picked up for distribution by Drafthouse Films. It launched on VOD and digital platforms on August 4, 2012, and opens theatrically at the IFC Center in New York City on August 29, 2012, and at The Cinefamily in Los Angeles and Alamo Drafthouse locations in Austin on August 31, 2012.) For the Fox News crowd, the Central African Republic could be seen as the future they’ve been waiting for: a skeleton government that rules hand in hand with ruthless, unregulated […]
by Paul Sbrizzi on Aug 30, 2012