News

September 8, 2011 - [ Wall Street Journal ]

The new film Last Call at the Oasis — which premieres on Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival — aims to make drinking water the hottest environmental topic since global warming. From the producers of An Inconvenient Truth, Food, Inc. and Waiting for "Superman," the documentary draws upon the research of scientists and includes diverse voices, from Erin Brockovich to actor Jack Black, to raise alarm bells about the state of the earth’s water supply.

September 8, 2011 - [ Forbes ]

Movies, television shows and books about the human race being practically destroyed by viruses are all the rage at the moment. Just look at the success of The Walking Dead, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. (Maybe I should have said "spoiler alert" for that last one.)

But few of these pieces of entertainment actually take the time to show us how the virus spread and how we humans dealt with it. Contagion fills that gap. The new film from Steven Soderbergh features a star-studded cast (including Gwyneth Paltrow and Matt Damon) alternately fight and succumbing to a deadly illness that quickly spreads across the globe.

September 7, 2011 - [ Filmmaker Magazine ]

For Oscar-winning filmmaker Jessica Yu’s latest film, Last Call at the Oasis, she looks at the frightening realities of the current global water crisis. Produced through the social issue giants Participant Media, Yu’s film has the makings of a must-see like An Inconvenient Truth and Food, Inc.

Filmmaker: Tell us a little about what your film is about?

Yu: Last Call at the Oasis is about the water crisis, which is global and urgent, yet largely hidden here in the U.S. The film tells stories of people who are on the front lines in dealing with water shortage or contamination, from farmers to scientists to homemakers to the real Erin Brockovich, who is still battling industrial polluters over a decade after the eponymous movie came out.

September 6, 2011 - [ Boston.com ]

The first time I saw the trailer for the movie <i>Contagion,</i> I felt my stomach knot with anxiety as I sat in the dark theater.

"Why do they make movies like that?" I whispered to my boyfriend.

I imagined the movie paralyzing people, perhaps me included, with irrational fears about an unrealistic, monster virus that takes the world hostage.

"Movies like this can sensationalize events and also can communicate a very distorted picture of what actually happens in cases like this," said K. Vish Viswanath, associate professor of society, human development, and health at Harvard School of Public Health.

September 6, 2011 - [ ComingSoon.net ]

The role of the screenwriter in studio filmmaking is sometimes marginalized by the more prominent role of the director or the involvement of the studio in the creative process, which often makes it a rarity for a screenwriter who starts on a project to be on it until the bitter end.

Scott Z. Burns has been fairly lucky in that regard as he has collaborated with filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher and Paul Greengrass, all whom appreciate the importance of the screenwriter in allowing for a cohesive vision.

September 6, 2011 - [ The Los Angeles Times ]

Perception of characters is grounded in personal experience. For a critic raised in the South, those in the '60s-set film are relatable.

In "The Help's" homespun story of racism in '60s-era Mississippi, some saw stereotypes. I saw pieces of my childhood — for better or worse.

That's the inherent difficulty of deciding what is and is not a stereotype. How we view any character is grounded in personal experience — what you know well you see differently. What plays as exaggeration, even parody, can reveal deeper truths. And that was the case for me with "The Help."

September 3, 2011 - [ Salon.com ]

In Steven Soderbergh's upcoming disaster film "Contagion," no one -- not even Gwyneth Paltrow -- is safe from a pandemic virus that kills quickly and leaves mass frenzy in its wake.

We'd all like to hope that the film's scenario is mere fantasy, calculated to give brave moviegoers a decisive end-of-summer thrill. But as Dr. Ian Lipkin, who balanced a consultative role on the movie with his responsibilities as director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia and co-chair of the National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee, tells Salon, these things are unpredictable, and "Contagion's" plot is far from implausible. Indeed, Soderbergh and "Contagion" screenwriter Scott Burns went out of their way to make the movie "ultrarealistic."

September 2, 2011 - [ Iranian.com ]

I had the opportunity to talk with director/screenwriter Maryam Keshavarz about her new film Circumstance, which won the 2011 Sundance Audience Award. Fortunately, one of the lead actors, Reza Sixo Safai, was also able to join us to add his perspective in a three-way discussion. We began with the scene where the characters are trying to dub the gay themed movie Milk to distribute in Iran:

Ari: Was this a reference to your own movie, because you are hoping Circumstance will be illegally copied and distributed in Iran? Obviously they won’t allow a story involving lesbian teenagers to be legally distributed.

Maryam: (laughs) Hoping or not, it’s going to happen. I made the Color of Love and it wasn’t allowed to be shown in Iran, but it was broadcast all through Europe, so people in Iran watched it. Interesting how stuff gets back into the country. All the underground is really into movies. I remember when I was there Brokeback Mountain was really huge. It was like, oh my god, forbidden love! It was number one. Nihilistic forbidden love is part of Iranian culture.

September 1, 2011 - [ San Francisco Chronicle ]

Filmmaker Maryam Keshavarz's name is instantly recognizable as Iranian. Her accent? Totally New York-New Jersey, where Keshavarz was born and raised. Keshavarz, though, would often return to Iran - she attended school there in the second grade, and also went there for graduate school - so her formative years were split between a country in the midst of religious rule and one that gave her the freedom to be whatever she wanted. This dual experience ultimately fueled the themes that anchor "Circumstance," her drama about two 16-year-old girls who test the limits of Iran's social norms.

August 31, 2011 - [ Hollywood Reporter ]

Tate Taylor's The Help has crossed the $100 million mark in box office grosses in less than three weeks in release in a notable victory for DreamWorks and Participant Media.

Based on Kathryn Stockett's novel about Southern white women and their black maids, The Help has stayed at No. 1 the past two weekends; the film opened Aug. 10.

“We never imagined this film, which began its journey inspired by the enthusiasm of a small group of Mississippi friends, would ever even get made. Now to have it seen and embraced by so many people is just beyond our wildest dreams," Taylor said in a statement.

August 31, 2011 - [ Huffington Post ]

The film Circumstance is more than just a crowd-pleaser.

Circumstance won the Audience Award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and received a standing ovation from the sell-out crowd at the Landmark Theatre on Sunday, August 27, 2011, but this erotic story of sanctuary-seeking Iranian teens is more than just a salacious crowd-pleaser. It is a peak through the keyhole into the inner sanctum of an Iranian family trying to keep the police state from poisoning their sophisticated palates. It is a hidden camera (literally) into the bedrooms, raves and orgasms of curious, world-wise, "naughty" young adults who are drunk on dreams, but are constantly being sobered up by the Morality Police. And that is what makes the film so important.

August 30, 2011 - [ The Atlantic ]

Maryam Keshavarz's Circumstance, which hit theaters Friday, depicts an Iran that the American media rarely shows—indeed, an Iran that Iranian media rarely shows.

In Iran, women are only allowed to take their hijabs off indoors, but films are banned from showing this. And yet Circumstance does, as it tells the tale of a teenage lesbian couple struggling to stay together in Tehran.

To get these images, though, Keshavarz had to film in Lebanon, recreating specific Iranian streets—right down to their graffiti—by studying pictures from Facebook. By doing so, she knew would be in danger of arrest if she returned to Iran. Early in the screenwriting process, this weighed on her: "I was afraid of overstepping my boundaries and doing something too political and jeopardizing my ability to go back." But, she adds, "the characters themselves were pushing me to be more honest."

August 29, 2011 - [ USA Today ]

The first time Judi Dench worked with director John Madden, she earned an Oscar nomination as Queen Victoria in 1997's Mrs. Brown. Their collaboration proved so gratifying that the actress recalls telling him, "If you need someone to stroll across in the background in your next film, please call me."

He took her at her word, and Dench's "stroll" was good enough to win a supporting Oscar for her brief yet indelible portrait of Queen Elizabeth I in 1998's Shakespeare in Love.

August 29, 2011 - [ USA Today ]

For Judi Dench, one of the joys of making The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was the opportunity to visit India, where the story's seven British retirees seek a reasonably priced paradise in which to live out their golden years.

"E.M. Forster said anyone who has ever been to India will never be the same afterward," she says of the 9½ weeks spent on location in Udaipur and Jaipur in Rajasthan. "It was my first time but I hope not the last. I kept a diary for the first time. Even if no one reads it, I should at some point."

August 29, 2011 - [ The Los Angeles Times ]

Assorted Iranian backgrounds help writer-director Maryam Keshavarz and a young team of actors arrive at a bold narrative of youth culture in post-revolution Iran.

From the film's description on paper, a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of cultural oppression in Iran, "Circumstance" could seem like an earnestly dour slice of good-for-you cinema, so the giddy, high-style group who bounded onstage at the Sundance Film Festival to accept the prize when it won the U.S. dramatic competition audience award turned more than a few heads.

August 26, 2011 - [ The New York Times ]

The new thriller “Contagion” revisits a conundrum that has bedeviled many filmmakers over the years: how do you make a movie about a virus, a villain that isn’t even visible? Epidemic movies have sidestepped the problem by focusing on the aftermath of a deadly plague, as with “The Omega Man” (1971) and “12 Monkeys” (1995), both set in postapocalyptic wastelands. Another option is to invent a disease with outlandish symptoms, as in “The Crazies” (1973), in which the infected turn homicidally insane, or “28 Days Later” (2002), in which they become zombies.      
 
But unlike many of its predecessors, “Contagion,” which tracks the global spread of a lethal flulike virus, resists the sheen of science fiction or fantasy and instead stresses the chilling plausibility of its nightmare situation.  

August 26, 2011 - [ New York Magazine ]

One of the most thrilling directorial debuts of this year, Maryam Keshavarz’s Circumstance is an edge-of-your-seat thriller with silk-sheet sex; a soap-operatic family melodrama with double-crossing siblings; and an exploration of the power of the state in the private sphere. Oh, and it’s set in Iran.

But it wasn’t shot there. In Iran, sexual scenes are not allowed, female and male actors are generally not allowed to touch each other, and women can’t dance, just for starters. So. Keshavarz, an Iranian-American writer-director with family in both countries, shot her film in Lebanon. She introduces a family in the relatively liberal elite of Tehran — a subculture we don’t exactly see very often onscreen — but the film doesn’t feel weighed down with the burden of representation: It’s too free-flowing for that, too plot-heavy, too stylish, too romantic, too hot. The first scene is a red-lit fantasy of the women shimmying in a night club. In front of a television playing bootlegged shows, the young women shake their hips just like the kids on American Idol. Drunk, they overdub Sex and the City’s orgasmic moans and gasps while giggling about their goofy transgressions, then (when things get slightly more heavy) overdub Sean Penn’s cri de couers from Milk. They go clubbing, slam shots, snort lines, argue about politics, and then shimmy in lingerie some more. Worse, one girl gets caught driving. Alone.

August 25, 2011 - [ Daily Beast ]

Banned in Iran, a winner at Sundance, Maryam Keshavarz’s film Circumstance stunningly captures the love affair of two 16-year-old Iranian girls. She details the film’s troubled gestation to David Ansen.

Maryam Keshavarz's stunning, sensual Circumstance has already been denounced, sight unseen, by the Iranian government, which got wind of it after the movie won the Audience Award at this year's Sundance film festival. The film, set in contemporary Tehran (though shot in Lebanon), will never be released in Iran, though you can be sure pirated DVDs will be a hot item on the black market. The Iranian-American writer and director, 36, who spent her childhood shuttling back and forth between the U.S. and the country of her parent's birth, knew even as she was writing it that making this movie would mean she could never return to Iran. Actually, that's not quite true, she explains with a laugh. "I can go back. I just can't leave."

August 24, 2011 - [ Reuters ]

After Iranian-American filmmaker Maryam Keshavarz made Circumstance, she knew she would might never be able to return to her homeland again, but that hasn't stopped her from telling the story.

The film, which begins playing in U.S. theaters on Friday after a strong debut at this year's Sundance Film Festival, tells of two Iranian teenage girls who fall in love. But they face interference from a brother who joins the religious police and a government that refuses to acknowledge gay people exist.

"I've seen very few films that address women's sexuality -- in Iran, in the Muslim world, at all," Keshavarz told Reuters. "As much as some people are upset about the film, there are other people who are like, 'Finally! Something that's us!'"

August 23, 2011 - [ Equality Magazine ]

Making an independent film is always tough. But it was even harder for Maryam Keshavarz, the writer and director of Circumstance who had to cut off contact with family members in Iran to protect them from the government which condemned her film sight unseen. The film, set in Tehran, was shot in Lebanon in fear of
endangering the crew. That’s pretty scary business for anyone, let alone a first-time feature filmmaker.

But based on the film’s reception since its world premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, where it received the Audience Award, it was worth it. The film — one of 16 films chosen from 1,102 submissions — tells the story of two teens, joined-at-the-hip, best friends who fall in love. The mainstream appeal of this film will be tested when it is released Aug. 26 by Roadside Attractions.