Latest news with #TellurideFilmFestival
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
UTA Partner Jeremy Barber & Comms Vet Chris Day Join KCRW Board
EXCLUSIVE: United Talent Agency Partner and Agent Jeremy Barber and Communications veteran Chris Day have joined the board of Southern California's NPR flagship station KCRW. This move comes in the wake of President Donald Trump issuing an executive order to block federal funding to Public Broadcast Service and National Public Radio. Funding from both government and philanthropic sources has grown increasingly uncertain, while the information landscape is more fragmented than ever. In this environment, stations like KCRW play a key role in bridging divides, elevating underrepresented voices, and providing reliable, in-depth reporting at the local and global levels. More from Deadline Ruth Seymour Dies: Groundbreaking Longtime KCRW General Manager Was 88 KCRW Workers Choose SAG-AFTRA As Their Union Dave Franco & Alison Brie Accused Of Copyright Infringement In 'Together' Suit Barber and Day's addition to the KCRW Foundation signals the Board's heightened commitment to preserving the role of public media as a trusted source of news, music, and thoughtful conversation for all communities. 'This is a critical moment for public broadcasting,' said Jennifer Ferro, President of KCRW. 'At a time when disinformation is rampant, journalism is under constant threat, and arts funding continues to shrink, the value of an independent, nonprofit public media outlet like KCRW cannot be overstated. Jeremy and Chris deeply understand the cultural and civic importance of what we do, and we are incredibly fortunate to welcome their guidance and support.' Barber said, 'Public radio is an essential element of a free and democratic nation. KCRW's commitment to storytelling, music discovery and fostering community is more critical than ever as we begin to rebuild and reimagine the future fabric of Los Angeles and beyond. I am so excited to be joining Jennifer and the board in this fight to preserve and expand the role of KCRW and the public airwaves.' Day added, 'In an era of media consolidation and extreme partisanship, public broadcasting remains one of the last strongholds of truly independent journalism and creative expression. Joining the KCRW board is not just an honor—it's a call to action. We must protect this institution and ensure it thrives for the next generation.' Barber, a Partner in UTA's Motion Picture Literary and Talent Departments, is known for his work repping celebrated filmmakers, actors, and creators. Prior to UTA, Barber was President of Catch 23 and Catch 23 UK, the production and management company which he helped found, and was also head of Production and Acquisitions at Artisan Entertainment. Prior to Hollywood, Barber had stints in law and politics. Of the boards he serves or has served on are the Georgetown University Law School Board of Visitors, the Telluride Film Festival's Esteemed Council of Advisors, the board of The People Concern, and the Independent School Alliance Board of Directors. He was also Chairman of the Board of the UCLA Lab School for almost a decade, where he now maintains an emeritus position. Barber currently is a Storytelling Consultant to Harvard College through Harvard Divinity School's Center for the Study of World Religions' Constellation Project around narratives surrounding the climate crisis. Day is a strategic communications and branding consultant and a 25-year veteran of the media and entertainment industry. He provides advisory services to CEOs, founders and creative entrepreneurs and represents leading companies and organizations across entertainment and media. Prior to forming his consultancy, Day served as Head of Corporate Communications for UTA from 1999 until 2017. During his tenure, he built and led the agency's widely respected corporate communications department, overseeing all external and internal communications during the agency's growth into a global top three player. He also co-established the UTA Foundation and the company's research and analytics department and was heavily involved in the firm's corporate consulting practice, among other initiatives. Prior to UTA, Day was VP of film & TV comms firm Bumble Ward & Associates where he represented corporate clients in television. Day has also championed causes that reflect the diverse voices and values of the broader community, including his work for Rideback RISE, the non-profit content accelerator that supports diverse filmmakers and creators in making commercial film and television to drive narrative change. KCRW 89.9 FM is home to such shows as Morning Becomes Eclectic, Press Play, Good Food, The Treatment, and The Business and serves as an incubator for new talent and ideas. A community service of Santa Monica College, KCRW reaches millions around the globe through its on-air broadcasts, podcasts, events, and digital content. Best of Deadline TV Show Book Adaptations Arriving In 2025 So Far Book-To-Movie Adaptations Coming Out In 2025 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sean Ono Lennon Shares the Message He Hopes People Take Away From ‘One to One: John & Yoko' Documentary
Sean Ono Lennon is confident that the One to One: John & Yoko documentary 'is going to be very revelatory for everybody who sees it. For sure.' Present company excepted, however. 'I do think I know my parents pretty well,' says Ono Lennon, who co-executive produced the film (along with Brad Pitt and others) and served as its music producer. 'I knew about that time. It was only a couple years before I was born. My mother spoke about it a lot. I know a lot about their story, including (this time period), so I would not frame it that I learned something necessarily.' More from Billboard Actress Michelle Trachtenberg's Cause of Death Revealed Daryl Hannah Claims Neil Young's Citizenship Process Was Hindered by 'Every Trick in the Book' Tracy Chapman's Debut Album Hits Top 10 on Billboard's Album Sales Chart After Vinyl Reissue Other viewers, however, will get a thorough look into one of the most dramatic 18-month periods in the couple's lives — which, for anybody who knows about them, is saying something — from their move to New York City's Greenwich Village in 1971 to the One to One benefit concert at Madison Square Garden on Aug. 30, 1972, Lennon's only full-length performances after the Beatles' 1970 split. One to One premiered at the Venice Film Festival last August, also showing at the Telluride Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival before its IMAX rollout on April 11. One to One opens wide in theaters starting April 18 and will stream on Max later this year. Directed by Kevin Macdonald and distributed by Magnolia Pictures, One to One employs a montage-style collection of footage and sound recordings (some provided by the John Lennon Estate) to present Lennon and Ono primarily in their own words, without third-party narration. 'Certainly Kevin and myself were sitting around in a room for quite a few weeks, scratching our heads — not in a bad way — deciding what direction we wanted to go in,' says co-director and editor Sam Rice-Edwards. 'We didn't want to make just another Beatles or Lennon documentary; there's plenty out there, and this needed to be original and fresh. 'Kevin came up with the concept of presenting the world as John and Yoko would have seen it in 1972; we felt if you did that, and we also spent time with them, in a way, that was really what people hadn't done before. We found moments where we felt like the camera wasn't on them…which gave us a fresh look at John and Yoko and allowed (the viewer) to be with them in a way you hadn't before.' Ono Lennon — who acknowledges that left to his own devices 'I probably would've made a live concert film' — felt the approach was 'really effective in telling their story. It's not easy to maintain such a complex story, but (One to One) does it very beautifully. If it was narrated it would've been more of an op-ed. This is a true documentary in that it allows the subjects to tell their own story.' Using other period footage — snippets of TV shows, commercials, news footage, etc. — to provide a context for the time, One to One finds Lennon and Ono embroiled in strident political activism, including an association with Jerry Rubin, that made them targets for FBI surveillance and, ultimately, attempts to deport Lennon by the administration of then-President Richard Nixon. 'It's really a beautiful story because you realize they were willing to risk everything, their careers and even their personal safety, to fight for their political and moral beliefs,' Ono Lennon says. But, he adds, only to a point. 'I think an important message to glean from the film has to do with the way my parents reacted to the more extreme elements of the radical activists they were working with at the time,' he explains. 'At a certain point they realized the people they we working with, or some of them — Jerry Rubin specifically — were proposing to do things that were not necessarily aligned with my parents' philosophy of pacifism and peace and love. You witness the trajectory of my parents experimenting with the radical groups and then realizing that they'd sort of gone too far, and they had to pull back — not just because it became dangerous for them but because people who were arguing for potentially violent activism were basically becoming as bad as the people they were fighting, which is really an important message for today, too.' Ono Lennon says that as a youth his mother spoke frequently about that particular time, including being 'freaked out' about the FBI wiretaps on the couple's phones. 'My early childhood was chaotic, obviously, and a lot of stuff that was happening in the film, the echoes were still resounding throughout my childhood,' he recalls — which includes the FBI planting an agent with the family after Lennon's assassination in 1980. He adds that Ono 'never believed activism was worth losing your life over. She always felt like it's important to protect yourself so you can keep on doing good. If you're not alive, what's the point? Some people glamorized certain revolutionary kinds of characters willing to resort to violence. She never admired those people, and I don't, either.' The grail find for the One To One documentarians was an unlabeled box of reel-to-reel tapes that held recordings of Lennon and Ono's phone calls, which they began making when they discovered their lines were bugged. The conversations, with manager Allen Klein as well as a variety of employees and friends, were discovered by Simon Hilton, vice president of Multimedia Projects for the Lennon Estate, amidst the Lennon archives in New York. Rice-Edwards recalls that 'we knew pretty quickly this was really important. Listening to John and Yoko, or the people around them, when they thought they weren't being listened to was extremely revealing about who they were. And a lot of what they were talking about in the phone calls was relevant to events we were covering in the film.' Ono Lennon, meanwhile, considers the tapes 'a pot of gold,' for the film as well as for himself. The One to One concert materials have been released before, but Ono Lennon and the filmmakers went to great pains to correct shortcomings from the original source material, which was initially released as a TV special directed by Steve Gebhardt and featured appearances by some of the other acts, including Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack and Sha Na Na. 'There was some really crazy camera work,' Rice-Edwards says. 'A lot of people working on the film, the camera people, were really high, so we had to work with that. But there was some really great stuff as well. That fact it was shot on film originally — in lovely 35mm — helped, and it was certainly good. We just treated it in the right way and made it the best we could.' On the audio side, Ono Lennon found that 'the recordings themselves were quite chaotic…. There were mics that were misplaced, and a lot of mics were moved between the matinee and evening shows. It seems like things were done in an improvised and last-minute manner. But we didn't mind because it was more fun to have the challenge. I don't want to give away too many of the tricks. I think there's a reasonable amount of movie magic in there, let's put it that way; it was a great time, technologically speaking, for us to reinvestigate the mixes. We have more tools than ever to bring out the best and turn down what's undesirable. It did take a lot of work to get it where it is now, but that was part of the joy of doing it.' He did come away with favorites among the performances, including sharpening the mixes of 'Cold Turkey' and 'Come Together' and hearing his father's performances of the song 'Mother.' 'To see him sing that song, which is a very different style from Beatles music…His voice is so incredible and so moving,' Ono Lennon says. 'It's kind of shocking, honestly, and it's very sweet as well…very vulnerable, but also powerful at the same time.' His mother's aggressive rendition of 'Don't Worry Kyoko' also resonated with him. 'She had several styles (of music), but 'Don't Worry Kyoko' is the more challenging, punk rock stuff…there wasn't even (punk rock) yet. Some people might not have liked listening to it on the stereo, but when you see the show and see the audience live, it really does translate. It's all about the energy, and the groove is there. It's undeniably rockin'.' He adds that Ono, retired at 92, was not deeply involved with One to One but is 'not unhappy with anything' about the film. Ono Lennon has finished work on a One to One soundtrack release slated for Oct. 9 in several formats and packages. The full two concerts will definitely be part of it, while additional performance content from the period — such as songs from Lennon and Ono's stint on The Dick Cavett Show during September 1971 — is currently being discussed and licensed. 'Whatever we can put on we're putting on,' says Ono Lennon, who's also finishing work on a new album of his own. 'I think we'll put on basically everything that would make sense to put on it…to satisfy the hardcore fans.' Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart
New York Times
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Sundance Picks Its New Home: Boulder, Colo.
The Sundance Film Festival is venturing to a new ski town. After a year of deliberations, copious site visits and scores of plane rides, the board of the Sundance Institute has chosen Boulder, Colo., to host its film festival beginning January 2027. 'Boulder is a tech town, a college town, it's a really creative town,' Eugene Hernandez, the festival's director, said. 'It's just a really creative place. And that integration of the artsy community with the university side of it all, is really dynamic.' It's also 10 times the size of Park City, Utah, where the festival has been held since the actor and director Robert Redford started it in 1981. As the festival kept growing, Park City began bursting at the seams. Ebs Burnough, chair of the Sundance Institute, said the move to another mountain town would help Sundance maintain its connection to the natural world. 'It's easy to get drawn into that amazing thing that Robert Redford really believed in, which was that commune between the artist and nature, and to actually be able to get away from the verticalness of cities.' To frequent Sundance goers, the move to Boulder is likely to be less jarring than shifting the location to Cincinnati, one of two other finalist cities. Salt Lake City was also in the running, and the loss of the festival will be significant to the state of Utah. The festival generated $132 million in revenue for the state in 2024, according to a report released by the festival. Sundance announced last April that it was exploring the possibility of a new home. Park City just didn't have enough movie theaters, and lodging prices had become exorbitant. A good portion of the locals were ready for it to go, too. While Sundance added 1,730 jobs according to the festival, it also kept skiers away during a prime month of winter snow. 'Words cannot express the sincere gratitude I have for Park City, the state of Utah, and all those in the Utah community that have helped to build the organization,' Mr. Redford said in a statement. Boulder, about 30 miles outside of Denver, has around 100,000 residents compared with Park City's 8,200. The festival intends to center its activities in the city's downtown and its nearby theaters, venues and the Pearl Street Mall, a pedestrian street with restaurants and cafes. The festival will also collaborate with the University of Colorado Boulder. Initially, over 100 U.S. locations offered to host the festival. Sundance winnowed them down to the 67 that could meet a variety of requirements, including adequate screening and lodging locations, and proximity to a sizable international airport. The Sundance selection committee then invited 13 of those cities to submit a proposal. Six of them — Atlanta; Boulder; Cincinnati; Louisville, Ky., Salt Lake City; and Santa Fe, N.M. — were later selected for site visits. Sundance will not be the only significant film festival held in Colorado. The Telluride Film Festival has been operating over Labor Day weekend in Telluride, a mountain town in the southwest part of the state, for over 50 years.
