Universal’s ‘Moonage Daydream’ and Sony’s ‘Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song’ both out.
Two modern music icons face off at UK-Ireland cinemas this weekend, with the release of David Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream and Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song.
Opening in 50 sites, most of which are Imax, Universal’s Moonage Daydream is a journey through Bowie’s creative and musical output. The film, which launched as an out-of-competition Midnight Screening in Cannes this May, is written, directed, edited and produced by US filmmaker Brett Morgen.
Moonage Daydream has the backing of the David Bowie estate...
Two modern music icons face off at UK-Ireland cinemas this weekend, with the release of David Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream and Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song.
Opening in 50 sites, most of which are Imax, Universal’s Moonage Daydream is a journey through Bowie’s creative and musical output. The film, which launched as an out-of-competition Midnight Screening in Cannes this May, is written, directed, edited and produced by US filmmaker Brett Morgen.
Moonage Daydream has the backing of the David Bowie estate...
- 9/16/2022
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
A new Venice-bound documentary on singer Leonard Cohen will be shopped internationally by doc specialists Dogwoof.
Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s latest feature “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song” is executive produced by Oscar winner Morgan Neville and Jonathan Dana, a long-time collaborator of directors Geller and Goldfine (“The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden”). The film explores the poet and singer-songwriter’s life through the lens of what’s arguably his most famous work, the hymn “Hallelujah,” which has been covered countless times by other artists over the years.
“Hallelujah” will world premiere Out of Competition at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 2.
“With Leonard Cohen’s worldwide reputation and ‘Hallelujah’s’ standing as one of the most recognized and covered songs from any artist, Dogwoof’s abilities as a global partner create a perfect fit for representing our documentary. We are delighted to work with their excellent team,...
Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s latest feature “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song” is executive produced by Oscar winner Morgan Neville and Jonathan Dana, a long-time collaborator of directors Geller and Goldfine (“The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden”). The film explores the poet and singer-songwriter’s life through the lens of what’s arguably his most famous work, the hymn “Hallelujah,” which has been covered countless times by other artists over the years.
“Hallelujah” will world premiere Out of Competition at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 2.
“With Leonard Cohen’s worldwide reputation and ‘Hallelujah’s’ standing as one of the most recognized and covered songs from any artist, Dogwoof’s abilities as a global partner create a perfect fit for representing our documentary. We are delighted to work with their excellent team,...
- 7/27/2021
- by Manori Ravindran
- Variety Film + TV
‘Chaplin’ screenwriter William Boyd has adapted the true story.
Ivan Mactaggart, the UK producer whose credits include the Oscar-nominated animation Loving Vincent, has joined period drama The Galapagos Affair, written by William Boyd.
Mactaggart will produce through Cambridge Picture Company alongside Michael Kelk of Wire Films. Kelk previously developed the project with Working Title Films.
Based on a true story and set in the late 1920s, it centres on German doctor Friedrich Ritter and his patient, Dore Strauch, as their leave their spouses to pursue a utopian dream on the deserted Galapagos island of Floreana.
But their solitude is disrupted...
Ivan Mactaggart, the UK producer whose credits include the Oscar-nominated animation Loving Vincent, has joined period drama The Galapagos Affair, written by William Boyd.
Mactaggart will produce through Cambridge Picture Company alongside Michael Kelk of Wire Films. Kelk previously developed the project with Working Title Films.
Based on a true story and set in the late 1920s, it centres on German doctor Friedrich Ritter and his patient, Dore Strauch, as their leave their spouses to pursue a utopian dream on the deserted Galapagos island of Floreana.
But their solitude is disrupted...
- 12/19/2019
- by ¬0¦James Ashworth¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
Eric Lavallee: Name me three of your favorite “2014 discoveries”…
Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum: Plants Can Hear. Atmos. Stumbling Stones in Potsdam.
Lavallee: We read Nikole Beckwith’s Stockholm, Pennsylvania as psychological warfare —— what was the approach in audibly depicting Leia’s longing?
Kroll-Rosenbaum: Stockholm is a nuanced portrait of an incredibly complex situation. The music is full of possibility and openness. It comes in waves and breathes. It was important that the music leave room for interpretation, so that the audience could experience discovery along with Leia. Nikole paints in very clear and purposeful strokes, and the music is designed to be transparent in its motivation.
Kroll-Rosenbaum: There is a range of different kinds of music in the score. There is music that is about the outside, literally and figuratively. I built a harmonic structure out of two chords that sits somewhere between resolution and forward motion. I thought about ancient music,...
Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum: Plants Can Hear. Atmos. Stumbling Stones in Potsdam.
Lavallee: We read Nikole Beckwith’s Stockholm, Pennsylvania as psychological warfare —— what was the approach in audibly depicting Leia’s longing?
Kroll-Rosenbaum: Stockholm is a nuanced portrait of an incredibly complex situation. The music is full of possibility and openness. It comes in waves and breathes. It was important that the music leave room for interpretation, so that the audience could experience discovery along with Leia. Nikole paints in very clear and purposeful strokes, and the music is designed to be transparent in its motivation.
Kroll-Rosenbaum: There is a range of different kinds of music in the score. There is music that is about the outside, literally and figuratively. I built a harmonic structure out of two chords that sits somewhere between resolution and forward motion. I thought about ancient music,...
- 2/5/2015
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Whoopsy. I forgot to share this list... Herewith the films that could be up for Best Documentary Feature this year. We'll get a finalist of 15 at some point next month followed by 5 nominees in January "until we crown A Winnah!" If we've reviewed the titles, you'll notice their pretty color which you can then click on to read about them. The magic of the internet. You can also see the animated and documentary Oscar charts here.
The 134 Semi-Finalists
A-c
Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq, Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case, Algorithms, Alive Inside, All You Need Is Love, Altina, America: Imagine the World without Her, American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, Anita, Antarctica: A Year on Ice, Art and Craft, Awake: The Life of Yogananda, The Barefoot Artist, The Battered Bastards of Baseball, Before You Know It, Bitter Honey, Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity, Botso The Teacher from Tbilisi,...
The 134 Semi-Finalists
A-c
Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq, Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case, Algorithms, Alive Inside, All You Need Is Love, Altina, America: Imagine the World without Her, American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, Anita, Antarctica: A Year on Ice, Art and Craft, Awake: The Life of Yogananda, The Barefoot Artist, The Battered Bastards of Baseball, Before You Know It, Bitter Honey, Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity, Botso The Teacher from Tbilisi,...
- 11/3/2014
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
One hundred thirty-four features have been submitted for consideration in the Documentary Feature category for the 87th Academy Awards. A shortlist of 15 films will be announced in December.
The submitted features, listed in alphabetical order, are:
“Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq”
“Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case”
“Algorithms”
“Alive Inside”
“All You Need Is Love”
“Altina”
“America: Imagine the World without Her”
“American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs”
“Anita”
“Antarctica: A Year on Ice”
“Art and Craft”
“Awake: The Life of Yogananda”
“The Barefoot Artist”
“The Battered Bastards of Baseball”
“Before You Know It”
“Bitter Honey”
“Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity”
“Botso The Teacher from Tbilisi”
“Captivated The Trials of Pamela Smart”
“The Case against 8”
“Cesar’s Last Fast”
“Citizen Koch”
“CitizenFour”
“Code Black”
“Concerning Violence”
“The Culture High”
“Cyber-Seniors”
“DamNation”
“Dancing in Jaffa”
“Death Metal Angola”
“The Decent One”
“Dinosaur 13”
“Do You Know What My Name Is?...
The submitted features, listed in alphabetical order, are:
“Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq”
“Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case”
“Algorithms”
“Alive Inside”
“All You Need Is Love”
“Altina”
“America: Imagine the World without Her”
“American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs”
“Anita”
“Antarctica: A Year on Ice”
“Art and Craft”
“Awake: The Life of Yogananda”
“The Barefoot Artist”
“The Battered Bastards of Baseball”
“Before You Know It”
“Bitter Honey”
“Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity”
“Botso The Teacher from Tbilisi”
“Captivated The Trials of Pamela Smart”
“The Case against 8”
“Cesar’s Last Fast”
“Citizen Koch”
“CitizenFour”
“Code Black”
“Concerning Violence”
“The Culture High”
“Cyber-Seniors”
“DamNation”
“Dancing in Jaffa”
“Death Metal Angola”
“The Decent One”
“Dinosaur 13”
“Do You Know What My Name Is?...
- 11/2/2014
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Citizenfour, Life Itself, Red Army, Warsaw Uprising among long-list contenters for the 87th Academy Awards.
The Salt Of The Earth, Happy Valley, Jodorowsky’s Dune, Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, Food Chains and Point And Shoot are also named.
The submitted features, listed in alphabetical order, are:
20,000 Days On Earth
Afternoon Of A Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq
Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case
Algorithms
Alive Inside
All You Need Is Love
Altina
America: Imagine The World Without Her
American Revolutionary: The Evolution Of Grace Lee Boggs
Anita
Antarctica: A Year On Ice
Art And Craft
Awake: The Life Of Yogananda
The Barefoot Artist
The Battered Bastards Of Baseball
Before You Know It
Bitter Honey
Born To Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity
Botso The Teacher From Tbilisi
Captivated The Trials Of Pamela Smart
The Case Against 8
Cesar’s Last Fast
Citizen Koch
Citizenfour
Code Black
Concerning Violence
The Culture High
Cyber-Seniors
Damnation
Dancing In Jaffa
Death Metal Angola
The...
The Salt Of The Earth, Happy Valley, Jodorowsky’s Dune, Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, Food Chains and Point And Shoot are also named.
The submitted features, listed in alphabetical order, are:
20,000 Days On Earth
Afternoon Of A Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq
Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case
Algorithms
Alive Inside
All You Need Is Love
Altina
America: Imagine The World Without Her
American Revolutionary: The Evolution Of Grace Lee Boggs
Anita
Antarctica: A Year On Ice
Art And Craft
Awake: The Life Of Yogananda
The Barefoot Artist
The Battered Bastards Of Baseball
Before You Know It
Bitter Honey
Born To Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity
Botso The Teacher From Tbilisi
Captivated The Trials Of Pamela Smart
The Case Against 8
Cesar’s Last Fast
Citizen Koch
Citizenfour
Code Black
Concerning Violence
The Culture High
Cyber-Seniors
Damnation
Dancing In Jaffa
Death Metal Angola
The...
- 10/31/2014
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released its list of 134 film vying for the Best Feature Documentary Oscar at the 87th Annual Academy Awards in February. A number of the nonfic hopefuls have yet to get their required Los Angeles and New York qualifying releases. Those that don’t will be cut from the contention. A shortlist of 15 films will be announced in December. Oscar noms will be revealed January 15, and ABC will broadcast Hollywood’s Big Night live on February 22 from the Dolby Theatre.
Here are the docu feature submissions:
Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq
Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case
Algorithms
Alive Inside
All You Need Is Love
Altina
America: Imagine the World without Her
American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs
Anita
Antarctica: A Year on Ice
Art and Craft
Awake: The Life of Yogananda
The Barefoot Artist
The Battered Bastards of Baseball...
Here are the docu feature submissions:
Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq
Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case
Algorithms
Alive Inside
All You Need Is Love
Altina
America: Imagine the World without Her
American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs
Anita
Antarctica: A Year on Ice
Art and Craft
Awake: The Life of Yogananda
The Barefoot Artist
The Battered Bastards of Baseball...
- 10/31/2014
- by The Deadline Team
- Deadline
One hundred thirty-four features have been submitted for consideration in the Documentary Feature category for the 87th Academy Awards®. Several of the films have not yet had their required Los Angeles and New York qualifying releases. Submitted features must fulfill the theatrical release requirements and comply with all of the category's other qualifying rules in order to advance in the voting process. A shortlist of 15 films will be announced in December. Films submitted in the Documentary Feature category also may qualify for Academy Awards in other categories, including Best Picture, provided they meet the requirements for those categories. The 87th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 15, 2015, at 5:30 a.m. Pt in the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater. The Oscars® will be held on Sunday, February 22, 2015, at the Dolby Theatre® at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network. The Oscar...
- 10/31/2014
- by Steve Montgomery
- Alt Film Guide
DVD Release Date: Sept. 9, 2014
Price: DVD $29.99
Studio: Zeitgeist
Darwin meets Hitchcock in the true-crime tale The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came To Eden, a documentary portrait of a 1930s murder mystery that’s as strange and alluring as the famous archipelago itself.
A true-life murder mystery unspools in The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden
Fleeing conventional society, a Berlin doctor, Friedrich Ritter, and his younger mistress, the also married Dore Strauch, start a new life on uninhabited Floreana Island. But after the international press sensationalizes the exploits of the island’s “Adam and Eve”, others flock there—including a self-styled Swiss Family Robinson and a gun-toting Viennese Baroness and her two lovers. Things would never be the same.
To bring this incredible story to life, filmmakers Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller (Ballets Russes) interweave newly unearthed home movies of the original settlers, footage of native flora and fauna, testimonies of modern day islanders,...
Price: DVD $29.99
Studio: Zeitgeist
Darwin meets Hitchcock in the true-crime tale The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came To Eden, a documentary portrait of a 1930s murder mystery that’s as strange and alluring as the famous archipelago itself.
A true-life murder mystery unspools in The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden
Fleeing conventional society, a Berlin doctor, Friedrich Ritter, and his younger mistress, the also married Dore Strauch, start a new life on uninhabited Floreana Island. But after the international press sensationalizes the exploits of the island’s “Adam and Eve”, others flock there—including a self-styled Swiss Family Robinson and a gun-toting Viennese Baroness and her two lovers. Things would never be the same.
To bring this incredible story to life, filmmakers Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller (Ballets Russes) interweave newly unearthed home movies of the original settlers, footage of native flora and fauna, testimonies of modern day islanders,...
- 9/8/2014
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
★★★☆☆There's a legend on the South American Galapagos Islands that the famous tortoises that inhabit their shores have the power to stare into the souls of men. These enormous reptiles are said to judge each new arrival on their archipelago, and curse those that alight there with nefarious intent. The question is raised whether such a hex was placed upon a group of settlers in the 1930s, who are the subject of historical documentary, Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine's handsome The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden (2013). A real-life whodunnit provides a riveting narrative backbone but despite some juicy melodrama, this languid doc never quite lives up the intrigue of its central conundrum.
- 7/27/2014
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
There is so much depth and suspense to the real life happenings from the Galapagos Islands back in the 1930s, that this documentary feels almost like the film Alfred Hitchcock never made. This tale was Hitchcockian before Hitchcockian ever became a thing. Yet where this Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine production truly comes into its element, is with the quite staggering amount of footage that illustrates this fascinating tale, which has such linearity.
Primarily, we follow the adventures of Dore Strauch and Friedrich Ritter, who, in 1929, decided to get as far away from normal civilisation as possible, abandoning their friends and family in Germany, for a serene life on the tiny island of Floreana. Living off the land, they inadvertently gained notoriety in their native country, when their personal letters back home were intercepted by the press. Naturally, others were too inspired to move out to this idyllic paradise, though no sooner after people arrived,...
Primarily, we follow the adventures of Dore Strauch and Friedrich Ritter, who, in 1929, decided to get as far away from normal civilisation as possible, abandoning their friends and family in Germany, for a serene life on the tiny island of Floreana. Living off the land, they inadvertently gained notoriety in their native country, when their personal letters back home were intercepted by the press. Naturally, others were too inspired to move out to this idyllic paradise, though no sooner after people arrived,...
- 7/25/2014
- by Stefan Pape
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
The Academy has announced the new class of invited members for 2014 and, as is typical, many of which are among last year's nominees, which includes Barkhad Abdi, Michael Fassbender, Sally Hawkins, Mads Mikkelsen, Lupita Nyong'o and June Squibb in the Actors branch not to mention curious additions such as Josh Hutcherson, Rob Riggle and Jason Statham, but, okay. The Directors branch adds Jay and Mark Duplass along with Jean-Marc Vallee, Denis Villeneuve and Thomas Vinterberg. I didn't do an immediate tally of male to female additions or other demographics, but at first glance it seems to be a wide spread batch of new additions on all fronts. The Academy is also clearly attempting to aggressively bump up the demographics as this is the second year in a row where they have added a large number of new members, well over the average of 133 new members from 2004 to 2012. As far as...
- 6/26/2014
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is extending invitations to join the organization to 271 artists and executives who have distinguished themselves by their contributions to theatrical motion pictures.
Those who accept the invitations will be the only additions to the Academy’s membership in 2014.
“This year’s class of invitees represents some of the most talented, creative and passionate filmmakers working in our industry today,” said Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs. “Their contributions to film have entertained audiences around the world, and we are proud to welcome them to the Academy.”
The 2014 invitees are:
Actors
Barkhad Abdi – “Captain Phillips”
Clancy Brown – “The Hurricane,” “The Shawshank Redeption”
Paul Dano – “12 Years a Slave,” “Prisoners”
Michael Fassbender – “12 Years a Slave,” “Shame”
Ben Foster – “Lone Survivor,” “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”
Beth Grant – “The Artist,” “No Country for Old Men”
Clark Gregg – “Much Ado about Nothing,” “Marvel’s The Avengers”
Sally Hawkins – “Blue Jasmine,...
Those who accept the invitations will be the only additions to the Academy’s membership in 2014.
“This year’s class of invitees represents some of the most talented, creative and passionate filmmakers working in our industry today,” said Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs. “Their contributions to film have entertained audiences around the world, and we are proud to welcome them to the Academy.”
The 2014 invitees are:
Actors
Barkhad Abdi – “Captain Phillips”
Clancy Brown – “The Hurricane,” “The Shawshank Redeption”
Paul Dano – “12 Years a Slave,” “Prisoners”
Michael Fassbender – “12 Years a Slave,” “Shame”
Ben Foster – “Lone Survivor,” “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”
Beth Grant – “The Artist,” “No Country for Old Men”
Clark Gregg – “Much Ado about Nothing,” “Marvel’s The Avengers”
Sally Hawkins – “Blue Jasmine,...
- 6/26/2014
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong’o of 12 Years a Slave were two of the 271 artists and industry leaders invited to become members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which determines nominations and winners at the annual Oscars. The entire list of Academy membership—which numbers about 6,000—isn’t public information so the annual invitation list is often the best indication of the artists involved in the prestigious awards process. It’s worth noting that invitations need to be accepted in order for artists to become members; some artists, like two-time Best Actor winner Sean Penn, have declined membership over the years.
- 6/26/2014
- by Jeff Labrecque
- EW - Inside Movies
Pop quiz: What do Chris Rock, Claire Denis, Eddie Vedder and Josh Hutcherson all have in common? Answer: They could all be Oscar voters very soon. The annual Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences invitation list always makes for interesting reading, shedding light on just how large and far-reaching the group's membership is -- or could be, depending on who accepts their invitations. This year, 271 individuals have been asked to join AMPAS, meaning every one of them could contribute to next year's Academy Awards balloting -- and it's as diverse a list as they've ever assembled. Think the Academy consists entirely of fusty retired white dudes? Not if recent Best Original Song nominee Pharrell Williams takes them up on their offer. Think it's all just a Hollywood insiders' game? Not if French arthouse titans Chantal Akerman and Olivier Assayas join the party. It's a list that subverts expectation at every turn.
- 6/26/2014
- by Guy Lodge
- Hitfix
Inhospitable locations are prompt to be the source of legends and enigmatic theories. For most people the Galapagos Islands, off the coast of Ecuador, are only relevant due to their biodiversity made universally famous by none other than Darwin. His findings are studied by millions of children around the world as feasible proof of evolution. What they don't teach in school is the human history of this exuberant archipelago. One chapter in particular within this short, but surely captivating account of people settling there, is rather intriguing. As if pulled from the pages of a crime novel, what filmmakers Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine found is a story that involves deceit, deviant romances, and possibly even murder.
In 1929, Freidrich Ritter, a German doctor and a fan of Nietzsche's ideology, decides to leave his wife and head for the islands, his only companion was Dore Strauch, a woman who was enticed by the idea of leaving civilized society for the emptiness of an untouched paradise. Soon after their arrival to the uninhabited Floreana island, the pair discovers life in the wilderness is a serious endeavor. With Ww II lurking on the horizon, it wasn't long before other Germans decided to follow on their footsteps, thus when the Wittmer family arrived, Ritter's ideal solitude was disturbed. Still, it appears as if the two groups would manage to share the space, but when a third party settles in, an Austrian woman claiming to be a Baroness and her two lovers, conflict unravels leaving behind a trail of mysterious events - unsolved to this date. Such is the premise of Geller and Goldfine's documentary The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, which compiles archive footage, interviews, and narrations by the likes of Cate Blanchett , Sebastian Koch , and Diane Kruger This highly entertaining, darkly comedic, and well-crafted real-life melodrama tells a story almost impossible to believe. The directors shared with us the challenges and the huge undertaking that this project required, as well as their individual perceptions on such an incredible and, until now, hidden anecdote that adds to the allure the islands evoke.
Aguilar: How did you get involved with this fascinating and insane project?
Dayna: We were asked by a friend way back in 1998 to do camera and sound work on a sort of Darwin-type science project down in the Galapagos. We went not knowing anything about the islands except that Darwin had used them for his experiments and they had lots of really cool animals on them. Certainly not knowing that anyone lived there, because there is actually no indigenous people on the islands. Anyone that’s there now has emigrated, or their parents have emigrated, from some other place. While we were down there on our little boat traveling from island to island, one night we picked a book off the tiny little library shelf in the boat, and it was about the human history of the islands. We were like “Wow there is enough human history to fill a book?”. Then, even more cool was chapter 3 or 4, which was called “Murder in Paradise.”
Aguilar: What a title
Dan: [Laughs] Dayna loves her true crime books, so from that moment on, the fixation began for the rest of our trip around the islands that time
Dayna: Basically at that moment I sort of grabbed this little chapter and I said “Dan you’ve got to read this, it’s just so wacky” Then our naturalist guide, who had lived in the islands forever and knows everyone, he said to us “Well guess what you guys, the old lady [Margret] is still alive” This was back in 1998, she didn’t die until 2000. At that moment I became obsessed, I was like “We are in the islands for two weeks, there is no way we can’t go to Floreana and meet this woman,” but what we didn’t know at that point was that the way it works in the Galapagos, you got this very specific itinerary that’s attached to each boat and our boat was not supposed to go to Floreana.
Dan: The project we were working on, the science foundation project that we were shooting, had very specific animals and variations of species that our friend Doug needed, and none of them were the ones particular to Floreana. That’s why it wasn’t on the itinerary, and you can’t bend the itinerary once you get going, unless your boat breaks down in front of the island, which is what happened [Laughs]
Dayna: Literally every morning we’d wake up and I’d say, “So today Doug we are going to Floreana right? We are gonna go meet Margret Wittmer”, and it got to be kind of a joke but I know we were pissing off our friend Doug who hired us. He would roll his eyes [Laughs]. Finally almost towards the very end of our two weeks, the boat literally broke down in front of Floreana. We had to get off, we even got to take showers on the island, and we got to have tea with Margret.
Aguilar: What did she say? Was she open to speak about what happened to the Baroness?
Dan: She was mostly talking about how president Roosevelt came to visit because there was an airbase built in Galapagos during World War II to protect the Panama Canal. She was proud of that and kept talking about it, and then would wander into some different topics. In a moment where there was just a little bit of quiet in the conversation we all looked around for a beat, that’s when she blurted out apropos of nothing “En la boca cerrada no entran moscas”.We saw Miguel Mosquera, who was our naturalist on that trip, and who became our location manager for all the subsequent trips for our film, and his eyes popped out wide. I said, “What did she say?” because at the time neither Dayna nor I spoke Spanish, we’ve subsequently started to learn. After we left, Dayna and I said “ Miguel what did she just say?” and he translated for us: “A closed mouth admits no flies.” We thought, “Oh my God, she is toying with the reputation and the legacy, and teasing people about it”. Whether she did that because it was just her way to antagonize people because she was sick of being asked or because she has a devilish sense of humor. I think it's the latter because certainly her son and daughter, Rolf and Floreanita, have very sly senses of humor, so I think they inherited it from her.
Dayna: I think she was sort of playing with the visitors that came to the island. By that point and time she was in her 90s and so many years had gone by. There is no way she would’ve talked about it explicitly, but I think she really did get a kick out of it. She knew that when a visitor came to the island, front and foremost in their mind was “Ok what happened to the Baroness?” [Laughs]. Although no one would ask her about it at that point, I think it was her way of sort of joking around with us,
Aguilar: The search behind the film must have been extensive, how difficult was to find the footage and making a film out of a story hidden away for so long?
Dan: What happened is that, even though we were at that point fascinated with the story, there was no way to tell it without any kind of visual material. We were starting another movie called Ballets Russes, so we just thought “All right we’ll let it be for now” Then when the same friend Doug was starting a different science education project, he was working with a USC professor who also had brought his students down to Galapagos over the years. Of course because he was at USC, he happened to know of the archive in Doheny Library of all that footage. So our friend Doug, who we definitely owe a cocktail or two for this [Laughs], said “You guys have got to get down to USC and talked to this professor, Bill McComas, and see if you can get access because the archive is falling apart. There may be gold in there” We did, we started talking to the archivist, and then the university gave thumps up for us to take the footage with us and try to save it because they didn’t have the means to do it. We took that big risk, financially at least, and once we started seeing what was on those reels we thought “Ok, now we’ve got something going, we got a way to tell the story” I think that’s one reason why the story hadn’t been told for all those years, because you need to see those people in that situation to believe it! This story is so crazy you’d say “No, no that could’ve never happened.”
Aguilar: It is very ironic that people that wanted to be left alone and be isolated had so much footage of themselves and pictures. It feels as if they wanted to be noticed.
Dayna: It was one of those weird unfathomable ironies. First of all, we did use a little bit of an “artistic light,” basically all the footage or 99% of it was actually shot by Captain Allan Hancock and his cameraman. What he did is, once he and his crew of scientists landed on the island in 1931 and discovered Friedrich and Dore, he started asking them to reenact their lives for the camera. We always sort of say “Who knows, maybe he was inspired by Nanook of the North", because Robert J. Flaherty went in and actually had his protagonist go through his life again. Hancock asked them to reenact what they were doing, and he took photos and filmed, it was actually shot originally on 35 mm nitrate, which doesn’t exist any longer. Luckily he made a bunch of 16mm safety prints which were what we found in the archive. Once they got to the island, Friedrich, Dore, the Wittmers, certainly the baroness and her lovers, they were all pretty proud of the fact that they had managed to create these lives in this very unfriendly terrain, and they were willing to show it off. The other irony is that not only did they pose for the cameras, but they all brought typewriters. In Friedrich Ritter’s case it made sense because he really did want to go into seclusion so he could write the great philosophical manifesto.
Dan: Part of it is, I think, that in those days everyone wrote letters, and I suppose the odds of a typewritten letter getting there across all the moisture in the oceans might have been better than one written with a pen.Margret ultimately wrote a memoir, Dore Strauch wrote a memoir, they also wrote letters, Ritter wrote articles for magazine and newspapers around the world, John Garth, the scientist on the Velero, kept his journal. We wound up with a wealth of first person expressions that could be used to form this script where the characters come to life through their own words in writing. In our case we put them in opposition to each other and it didn’t take much work because they all had their own point of view, and sometimes insinuated that the other one was responsible for what was going on down there. That became more or less a screenwriter adaptation job, not adapting one book, but adapting 2 books, 2 sets of journals, and who knows how many articles, and letters. Dayna and I, and our fellow writer Celeste Schaefer Snyder, bit by bit went through the murder mystery story and tried to give everyone voice, and also keep it kind of fun and suspenseful.
Aguilar: With all the sexual tension and intrigue, this could have easily been a narrative drama. As a documentary, how did you balance the interviews with current islanders, the first person narratives, the footage, and all the other different sources to create something cohesive?
Dayna: It’s funny, Hollywood had been trying to make it as a fiction forever. The reason why it hasn't happened yet, although scripts have been flying around for over 20 years, is that it is such a complicated story, and there are so many characters. Each one is worthy of their own script, certainly they are all larger than life. That was really what took us the longest, I would say we worked with Bill Weber, our editor, for about two years. We went down so many dead ends, I can’t even tell you, we had so many work-in-progress screenings, scratch our heads, rewrote, re-cut, tried different balances of one character vs. another, or vs. the islanders perspective.
Dan: I think one thing that was important in setting each character onto the island was that we wanted to give them at least some moments where they could state clearly, and with real seriousness, why they were going and what their first impressions were like. Then that way, when things begin to verge toward the melodramatic or darkly humorous, there was already a foundation where you understood these people weren’t just cartoon characters. They had thought this through as much as they could and were trying to do something with a good spirit behind them. Even the Baroness, though her notions of the hotel or certainly her ability to fulfill the notion of the hotel was suspect from the beginning.
Aguilar: Even though you focus on this set of characters, the islands themselves have a mystifying personality and they appear to affect the people in them. Was this idea part of your creative process?
Dayna: Thank you so much, that’s exactly how we felt!. You are right when that woman tries to get away from the island it kind of sucks her back, in much the same way that Lorenz was sucked back and landed on Marchenta Isaland. In many ways the fact that the island had a drought, a really severe drought one of the worst in decades, we deeply believe it led to whatever happened to the Baroness and Phillipson. It’s funy, when were just starting to do the project, the series Lost was playing. Lost really did have the island as a character, and as we were watching the early episodes were chuckling and saying “It’s not so far from reality”
Dan: I wouldn’t have been surprised if we got into a backroom in a hotel and found the Dharma machine and someone was punching in the numbers every 90 minutes [Laughs]. Talking about the island reaching out, it turned out that Margery Simkin, who was our casting director on the movie, was in the Galapagos in 1986, her boat broke down, and she met Margret Wittmer in an unscheduled stop on Flroreana also. Maybe there is something about those islands, the fact that they’ve been uninhabited for so long, or that they are sitting over a volcanic hotspot. I don’t know what kind of lore you want to assign to it, but I agree with you, there is something weirdly mystical and prehistoric about the whole place.
Aguilar: Through their writing and the footage, both of you essentially met these characters, what are your thoughts on these characters who wanted to get away and begin again some place new?
Dayan: They each had different reasons. One of the things that sort of drew me to the project on a philosophical and emotional level was that I’m not sure there is anyone who hasn’t had that, momentary at least, dream of forsaking everything and going off to live on some deserted island somewhere. Everyone has his or her own reasons for wanting to do that at any specific moment. What was so interesting is that each of those people or collective groups in the film, had their own very specific reasons for going. In a way, each had its own very specific notions of what paradise might look like. One of the things that we talked about between us since the beginning of the project is that the film is about what could happen if you do take that leap? You leave society and you go in pursuit of your own little deserted island, in search of paradise. But when you get there, someone else is already situated on that same island and their notion of paradise clashes explicitly with your notion of paradise. What do you do?...
In 1929, Freidrich Ritter, a German doctor and a fan of Nietzsche's ideology, decides to leave his wife and head for the islands, his only companion was Dore Strauch, a woman who was enticed by the idea of leaving civilized society for the emptiness of an untouched paradise. Soon after their arrival to the uninhabited Floreana island, the pair discovers life in the wilderness is a serious endeavor. With Ww II lurking on the horizon, it wasn't long before other Germans decided to follow on their footsteps, thus when the Wittmer family arrived, Ritter's ideal solitude was disturbed. Still, it appears as if the two groups would manage to share the space, but when a third party settles in, an Austrian woman claiming to be a Baroness and her two lovers, conflict unravels leaving behind a trail of mysterious events - unsolved to this date. Such is the premise of Geller and Goldfine's documentary The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, which compiles archive footage, interviews, and narrations by the likes of Cate Blanchett , Sebastian Koch , and Diane Kruger This highly entertaining, darkly comedic, and well-crafted real-life melodrama tells a story almost impossible to believe. The directors shared with us the challenges and the huge undertaking that this project required, as well as their individual perceptions on such an incredible and, until now, hidden anecdote that adds to the allure the islands evoke.
Aguilar: How did you get involved with this fascinating and insane project?
Dayna: We were asked by a friend way back in 1998 to do camera and sound work on a sort of Darwin-type science project down in the Galapagos. We went not knowing anything about the islands except that Darwin had used them for his experiments and they had lots of really cool animals on them. Certainly not knowing that anyone lived there, because there is actually no indigenous people on the islands. Anyone that’s there now has emigrated, or their parents have emigrated, from some other place. While we were down there on our little boat traveling from island to island, one night we picked a book off the tiny little library shelf in the boat, and it was about the human history of the islands. We were like “Wow there is enough human history to fill a book?”. Then, even more cool was chapter 3 or 4, which was called “Murder in Paradise.”
Aguilar: What a title
Dan: [Laughs] Dayna loves her true crime books, so from that moment on, the fixation began for the rest of our trip around the islands that time
Dayna: Basically at that moment I sort of grabbed this little chapter and I said “Dan you’ve got to read this, it’s just so wacky” Then our naturalist guide, who had lived in the islands forever and knows everyone, he said to us “Well guess what you guys, the old lady [Margret] is still alive” This was back in 1998, she didn’t die until 2000. At that moment I became obsessed, I was like “We are in the islands for two weeks, there is no way we can’t go to Floreana and meet this woman,” but what we didn’t know at that point was that the way it works in the Galapagos, you got this very specific itinerary that’s attached to each boat and our boat was not supposed to go to Floreana.
Dan: The project we were working on, the science foundation project that we were shooting, had very specific animals and variations of species that our friend Doug needed, and none of them were the ones particular to Floreana. That’s why it wasn’t on the itinerary, and you can’t bend the itinerary once you get going, unless your boat breaks down in front of the island, which is what happened [Laughs]
Dayna: Literally every morning we’d wake up and I’d say, “So today Doug we are going to Floreana right? We are gonna go meet Margret Wittmer”, and it got to be kind of a joke but I know we were pissing off our friend Doug who hired us. He would roll his eyes [Laughs]. Finally almost towards the very end of our two weeks, the boat literally broke down in front of Floreana. We had to get off, we even got to take showers on the island, and we got to have tea with Margret.
Aguilar: What did she say? Was she open to speak about what happened to the Baroness?
Dan: She was mostly talking about how president Roosevelt came to visit because there was an airbase built in Galapagos during World War II to protect the Panama Canal. She was proud of that and kept talking about it, and then would wander into some different topics. In a moment where there was just a little bit of quiet in the conversation we all looked around for a beat, that’s when she blurted out apropos of nothing “En la boca cerrada no entran moscas”.We saw Miguel Mosquera, who was our naturalist on that trip, and who became our location manager for all the subsequent trips for our film, and his eyes popped out wide. I said, “What did she say?” because at the time neither Dayna nor I spoke Spanish, we’ve subsequently started to learn. After we left, Dayna and I said “ Miguel what did she just say?” and he translated for us: “A closed mouth admits no flies.” We thought, “Oh my God, she is toying with the reputation and the legacy, and teasing people about it”. Whether she did that because it was just her way to antagonize people because she was sick of being asked or because she has a devilish sense of humor. I think it's the latter because certainly her son and daughter, Rolf and Floreanita, have very sly senses of humor, so I think they inherited it from her.
Dayna: I think she was sort of playing with the visitors that came to the island. By that point and time she was in her 90s and so many years had gone by. There is no way she would’ve talked about it explicitly, but I think she really did get a kick out of it. She knew that when a visitor came to the island, front and foremost in their mind was “Ok what happened to the Baroness?” [Laughs]. Although no one would ask her about it at that point, I think it was her way of sort of joking around with us,
Aguilar: The search behind the film must have been extensive, how difficult was to find the footage and making a film out of a story hidden away for so long?
Dan: What happened is that, even though we were at that point fascinated with the story, there was no way to tell it without any kind of visual material. We were starting another movie called Ballets Russes, so we just thought “All right we’ll let it be for now” Then when the same friend Doug was starting a different science education project, he was working with a USC professor who also had brought his students down to Galapagos over the years. Of course because he was at USC, he happened to know of the archive in Doheny Library of all that footage. So our friend Doug, who we definitely owe a cocktail or two for this [Laughs], said “You guys have got to get down to USC and talked to this professor, Bill McComas, and see if you can get access because the archive is falling apart. There may be gold in there” We did, we started talking to the archivist, and then the university gave thumps up for us to take the footage with us and try to save it because they didn’t have the means to do it. We took that big risk, financially at least, and once we started seeing what was on those reels we thought “Ok, now we’ve got something going, we got a way to tell the story” I think that’s one reason why the story hadn’t been told for all those years, because you need to see those people in that situation to believe it! This story is so crazy you’d say “No, no that could’ve never happened.”
Aguilar: It is very ironic that people that wanted to be left alone and be isolated had so much footage of themselves and pictures. It feels as if they wanted to be noticed.
Dayna: It was one of those weird unfathomable ironies. First of all, we did use a little bit of an “artistic light,” basically all the footage or 99% of it was actually shot by Captain Allan Hancock and his cameraman. What he did is, once he and his crew of scientists landed on the island in 1931 and discovered Friedrich and Dore, he started asking them to reenact their lives for the camera. We always sort of say “Who knows, maybe he was inspired by Nanook of the North", because Robert J. Flaherty went in and actually had his protagonist go through his life again. Hancock asked them to reenact what they were doing, and he took photos and filmed, it was actually shot originally on 35 mm nitrate, which doesn’t exist any longer. Luckily he made a bunch of 16mm safety prints which were what we found in the archive. Once they got to the island, Friedrich, Dore, the Wittmers, certainly the baroness and her lovers, they were all pretty proud of the fact that they had managed to create these lives in this very unfriendly terrain, and they were willing to show it off. The other irony is that not only did they pose for the cameras, but they all brought typewriters. In Friedrich Ritter’s case it made sense because he really did want to go into seclusion so he could write the great philosophical manifesto.
Dan: Part of it is, I think, that in those days everyone wrote letters, and I suppose the odds of a typewritten letter getting there across all the moisture in the oceans might have been better than one written with a pen.Margret ultimately wrote a memoir, Dore Strauch wrote a memoir, they also wrote letters, Ritter wrote articles for magazine and newspapers around the world, John Garth, the scientist on the Velero, kept his journal. We wound up with a wealth of first person expressions that could be used to form this script where the characters come to life through their own words in writing. In our case we put them in opposition to each other and it didn’t take much work because they all had their own point of view, and sometimes insinuated that the other one was responsible for what was going on down there. That became more or less a screenwriter adaptation job, not adapting one book, but adapting 2 books, 2 sets of journals, and who knows how many articles, and letters. Dayna and I, and our fellow writer Celeste Schaefer Snyder, bit by bit went through the murder mystery story and tried to give everyone voice, and also keep it kind of fun and suspenseful.
Aguilar: With all the sexual tension and intrigue, this could have easily been a narrative drama. As a documentary, how did you balance the interviews with current islanders, the first person narratives, the footage, and all the other different sources to create something cohesive?
Dayna: It’s funny, Hollywood had been trying to make it as a fiction forever. The reason why it hasn't happened yet, although scripts have been flying around for over 20 years, is that it is such a complicated story, and there are so many characters. Each one is worthy of their own script, certainly they are all larger than life. That was really what took us the longest, I would say we worked with Bill Weber, our editor, for about two years. We went down so many dead ends, I can’t even tell you, we had so many work-in-progress screenings, scratch our heads, rewrote, re-cut, tried different balances of one character vs. another, or vs. the islanders perspective.
Dan: I think one thing that was important in setting each character onto the island was that we wanted to give them at least some moments where they could state clearly, and with real seriousness, why they were going and what their first impressions were like. Then that way, when things begin to verge toward the melodramatic or darkly humorous, there was already a foundation where you understood these people weren’t just cartoon characters. They had thought this through as much as they could and were trying to do something with a good spirit behind them. Even the Baroness, though her notions of the hotel or certainly her ability to fulfill the notion of the hotel was suspect from the beginning.
Aguilar: Even though you focus on this set of characters, the islands themselves have a mystifying personality and they appear to affect the people in them. Was this idea part of your creative process?
Dayna: Thank you so much, that’s exactly how we felt!. You are right when that woman tries to get away from the island it kind of sucks her back, in much the same way that Lorenz was sucked back and landed on Marchenta Isaland. In many ways the fact that the island had a drought, a really severe drought one of the worst in decades, we deeply believe it led to whatever happened to the Baroness and Phillipson. It’s funy, when were just starting to do the project, the series Lost was playing. Lost really did have the island as a character, and as we were watching the early episodes were chuckling and saying “It’s not so far from reality”
Dan: I wouldn’t have been surprised if we got into a backroom in a hotel and found the Dharma machine and someone was punching in the numbers every 90 minutes [Laughs]. Talking about the island reaching out, it turned out that Margery Simkin, who was our casting director on the movie, was in the Galapagos in 1986, her boat broke down, and she met Margret Wittmer in an unscheduled stop on Flroreana also. Maybe there is something about those islands, the fact that they’ve been uninhabited for so long, or that they are sitting over a volcanic hotspot. I don’t know what kind of lore you want to assign to it, but I agree with you, there is something weirdly mystical and prehistoric about the whole place.
Aguilar: Through their writing and the footage, both of you essentially met these characters, what are your thoughts on these characters who wanted to get away and begin again some place new?
Dayan: They each had different reasons. One of the things that sort of drew me to the project on a philosophical and emotional level was that I’m not sure there is anyone who hasn’t had that, momentary at least, dream of forsaking everything and going off to live on some deserted island somewhere. Everyone has his or her own reasons for wanting to do that at any specific moment. What was so interesting is that each of those people or collective groups in the film, had their own very specific reasons for going. In a way, each had its own very specific notions of what paradise might look like. One of the things that we talked about between us since the beginning of the project is that the film is about what could happen if you do take that leap? You leave society and you go in pursuit of your own little deserted island, in search of paradise. But when you get there, someone else is already situated on that same island and their notion of paradise clashes explicitly with your notion of paradise. What do you do?...
- 4/17/2014
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Sydney's Buzz
2014 is now in full swing, the Sundance Film Festival has closed its doors, and film festivals like South by Southwest and Tribeca are generating more buzz for the year’s noteworthy indie narratives and documentaries. In recent years, documentaries such as Restrepo, Gasland, and Searching For Sugarman went on to become heavyweights. This year’s contenders include topics taken from popular memoirs and biographies, along with subject matter pertaining to youths and youth culture. Below, you’ll find a comprehensive list of Sundance and non-Sundance documentaries to keep an eye out for this year, equipped with official synopsis and trailer when available. 2014 is shaping out to a versatile year in the documentary world, ranging from heavy-handed family dramas such as Tracy Droz Tragos’ and Andrew Droz Palermo’s Rich Hill, to baseball biographies such as Chapman and Maclain Way’s The Battered Bastards of Baseball and Jeff Radice’s No No A Dockumentary,...
- 3/9/2014
- by Christopher Clemente
- SoundOnSight
Exclusive: Film Sales Company also completes deal with Kinosmith for Canada.
The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came To Eden has worked its charms on international buyers as Diane Kruger and Sebastian Koch prepare to attend Monday’s (Feb 10) international premiere at the Berlinale.
According to buyers, Hopscotch has picked up Australia / New Zealand rights while Kinosmith will distribute in Canada.
Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine directed the documentary about sexual intrigue and murder on the remote island.
Kruger and Koch are among an illustrious voice-over cast alongside Oscar nominee Cate Blanchett and Thomas Kretschmann.
Geller and Goldfine produced with Celeste Schaefer Snyder and Jonathan Dana served as executive producer. The producers are in talks with companies over fictional remake rights.
Zeitgeist Films will release in the Us in April and Film Sales Company represents international sales.
The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came To Eden has worked its charms on international buyers as Diane Kruger and Sebastian Koch prepare to attend Monday’s (Feb 10) international premiere at the Berlinale.
According to buyers, Hopscotch has picked up Australia / New Zealand rights while Kinosmith will distribute in Canada.
Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine directed the documentary about sexual intrigue and murder on the remote island.
Kruger and Koch are among an illustrious voice-over cast alongside Oscar nominee Cate Blanchett and Thomas Kretschmann.
Geller and Goldfine produced with Celeste Schaefer Snyder and Jonathan Dana served as executive producer. The producers are in talks with companies over fictional remake rights.
Zeitgeist Films will release in the Us in April and Film Sales Company represents international sales.
- 2/6/2014
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
There was the Hobbit-effect in New Zealand, Walter Mitty in Iceland … Here's our pick of upcoming films with settings awesome enough to give you itchy feet
Has watching a film ever inspired you to book a trip, or dream about it? Let us know in the comments below
Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus
The title of this psychedelic road trip extravaganza gives a good idea of the drug-fuelled adventures to come. Crystal Fairy (Gaby Hoffmann), otherwise referred to as the "crazy dancing girl", joins Jamie (Michael Cera) and his Chilean pals as they embark on a road trip to find, and consume, the peyote cactus. The venue of choice is a beautiful beach on the edge of the Atacama desert, which makes for a striking yet simple backdrop for the drama. Cera and the cast actually did dope themselves up on mescalin during filming, so you can expect plenty of twitchy hallucinogenic realism.
Has watching a film ever inspired you to book a trip, or dream about it? Let us know in the comments below
Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus
The title of this psychedelic road trip extravaganza gives a good idea of the drug-fuelled adventures to come. Crystal Fairy (Gaby Hoffmann), otherwise referred to as the "crazy dancing girl", joins Jamie (Michael Cera) and his Chilean pals as they embark on a road trip to find, and consume, the peyote cactus. The venue of choice is a beautiful beach on the edge of the Atacama desert, which makes for a striking yet simple backdrop for the drama. Cera and the cast actually did dope themselves up on mescalin during filming, so you can expect plenty of twitchy hallucinogenic realism.
- 1/16/2014
- by Will Coldwell
- The Guardian - Film News
‘71, Life of Riley and Aloft selected. A Long Way Down, The Turning among Berlinale Special titles.
The first seven films selected for the Berlinale Competition programme include Yann Demange’s ‘71, Alan Resnais’ Life of Riley (Aimer, Boire et Chanter) and Claudia Llosa’s Aloft.
Also joining Wes Anderson’s opening film The Grand Budapest Hotel, and George Clooney’s Monuments Men, both announced in November, are Dominik Graf’s Die Geliebten Schwestern and Yannis Economides’ Stratos.
In the Berlinale Special strand are Pascal Chaumeil’s A Long Way Down, Australian anthology film The Turning, Hubert Sauper’s documentary We Come As Friends (Entente Cordiale) and Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller’s doc The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden.
Six of the seven announced main competition titles are world premieres – Monuments Men, which screens out of competition, gets its international premiere.
Chaumeil’s A Long Way Down, starring Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, [link...
The first seven films selected for the Berlinale Competition programme include Yann Demange’s ‘71, Alan Resnais’ Life of Riley (Aimer, Boire et Chanter) and Claudia Llosa’s Aloft.
Also joining Wes Anderson’s opening film The Grand Budapest Hotel, and George Clooney’s Monuments Men, both announced in November, are Dominik Graf’s Die Geliebten Schwestern and Yannis Economides’ Stratos.
In the Berlinale Special strand are Pascal Chaumeil’s A Long Way Down, Australian anthology film The Turning, Hubert Sauper’s documentary We Come As Friends (Entente Cordiale) and Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller’s doc The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden.
Six of the seven announced main competition titles are world premieres – Monuments Men, which screens out of competition, gets its international premiere.
Chaumeil’s A Long Way Down, starring Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, [link...
- 12/17/2013
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
A Long Way Down, The Turning among Berlinale Special titles.
The first seven films selected for the Berlinale Competition programme include Yann Demange’s ‘71, Alan Resnais’ Life of Riley (Aimer, Boire et Chanter) and Claudia Llosa’s Aloft.
Also joining Wes Anderson’s opening film The Grand Budapest Hotel, and George Clooney’s Monuments Men, both announced in November, are Dominik Graf’s Die geliebten Schwestern and Yannis Economides’ Stratos.
In the Berlinale Special strand are Pascal Chaumeil’s A Long Way Down [pictured], Australian anthology film The Turning, Hubert Sauper’s documentary We Come As Friends (Entente Cordiale) and Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller’s doc The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden.
Six of the seven announced main competition titles are world premieres – Monuments Men, which screens out of competition, gets its international premiere.
Chaumeil’s A Long Way Down, starring Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Aaron Paul and Imogen Poots, makes its world...
The first seven films selected for the Berlinale Competition programme include Yann Demange’s ‘71, Alan Resnais’ Life of Riley (Aimer, Boire et Chanter) and Claudia Llosa’s Aloft.
Also joining Wes Anderson’s opening film The Grand Budapest Hotel, and George Clooney’s Monuments Men, both announced in November, are Dominik Graf’s Die geliebten Schwestern and Yannis Economides’ Stratos.
In the Berlinale Special strand are Pascal Chaumeil’s A Long Way Down [pictured], Australian anthology film The Turning, Hubert Sauper’s documentary We Come As Friends (Entente Cordiale) and Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller’s doc The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden.
Six of the seven announced main competition titles are world premieres – Monuments Men, which screens out of competition, gets its international premiere.
Chaumeil’s A Long Way Down, starring Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Aaron Paul and Imogen Poots, makes its world...
- 12/17/2013
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
Among the unexpected title mentions in today’s highly anticipated Telluride line-up unveiling, Ballets Russes docu pairing Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller will reteam with indie outfitter Zeitgeist Films once again on The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden – which on paper sounds like a fascinatingm anthropological murder mystery in what appears to have been egomaniacal playground. THR reports that Zeitgeist is planning a theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles in early Spring 2014 and we wouldn’t be surprised if the film is showcased at major Docu fests such as Doc NYC and Ifda.
Gist: Co-written by Celeste Schaefer Snyder with Goldfine/Gellar, the doc is set in the Galapagos Islands in the 1930s, following a few individuals who settled on the remote island seeking their own distinct and sometimes clashing notions of Eden.
Worth Noting: The docu utilizes a narration team comprised of Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger,...
Gist: Co-written by Celeste Schaefer Snyder with Goldfine/Gellar, the doc is set in the Galapagos Islands in the 1930s, following a few individuals who settled on the remote island seeking their own distinct and sometimes clashing notions of Eden.
Worth Noting: The docu utilizes a narration team comprised of Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger,...
- 8/28/2013
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
In a preemptive move, Zeitgeist Films has picked up all Us rights to the murder mystery documentary "The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden" ahead of its premiere at Telluride this week. Directed by Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine, the film centers on a 1930s unsolved murder mystery involving a group of clashing individualists who settled on an island in the Galapagos. Described as Darwin meets Hitchcock, the documentary features voice performances by Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen and Josh Radnor, among others, as it interweaves details of the murder with stories of present day Galapagos pioneers. It features newly discovered archival footage, as well as present day HD footage of the Galapagos. Geller and Goldfine previously collaborated on the 2005 National Board of Review winning doc "Ballets Russes." "The Galapagos Affair" will have its theatrical release in NY and La in Spring 2014 before a national rollout.
- 8/28/2013
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
One day before its world premiere at the Telluride film festival, Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller’s murder-mystery documentary The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden has been picked up for U.S. distribution by Zeitgeist Films. The film, which features the voice cast of Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen and Josh Radnor, will debut at the film fest on Thursday, Aug 29. The doc is set in the Galapagos Islands in the 1930s, following a few individuals who settled on the remote island seeking their own distinct and sometimes clashing notions of Eden. Story: Telluride Film Festival Unveils
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- 8/28/2013
- by Rebecca Ford
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Twenty-seven new features will screen over the extended five-day anniversary event and there will be tributes to Robert Redford, T-Bone Burnett, the Coen Brothers and Mohammad Rasoulof - and there has already been a Us acquisition.
While observers do not expect much buyer activity at the festival, Zeitgeist announced it had made a preemptive Us buy on Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s The Galapagos Affair (see below).
The Sony Pictures Classics team, RADiUS-twc, IFC, Fox Searchlight’s production head Claudia Lewis and president of Paramount Film Group Adam Goodman are among those expected to attend the Colorado event, which runs from Aug 29 through the additional day of programming on Sept 2.
The main programme features are:
All Is Lost, Robert RedfordBefore The Winter Chill (France) Philippe ClaudelBethlehem (Israel) Yuval AdlerBlue Is The Warmest Color (France) Abdellatif KechicheBurning Bush (Czech Republic) Agnieszka HollandDeath Row: Blaine Milam + Robert Fratta, Werner HerzogFifi Howls From Happiness, Mitra FarahaniThe...
While observers do not expect much buyer activity at the festival, Zeitgeist announced it had made a preemptive Us buy on Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s The Galapagos Affair (see below).
The Sony Pictures Classics team, RADiUS-twc, IFC, Fox Searchlight’s production head Claudia Lewis and president of Paramount Film Group Adam Goodman are among those expected to attend the Colorado event, which runs from Aug 29 through the additional day of programming on Sept 2.
The main programme features are:
All Is Lost, Robert RedfordBefore The Winter Chill (France) Philippe ClaudelBethlehem (Israel) Yuval AdlerBlue Is The Warmest Color (France) Abdellatif KechicheBurning Bush (Czech Republic) Agnieszka HollandDeath Row: Blaine Milam + Robert Fratta, Werner HerzogFifi Howls From Happiness, Mitra FarahaniThe...
- 8/28/2013
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
The 40th annual Telluride Film Festival just announced its lineup of movies. The Labor Day weekend fest will include the North American premieres of hotly anticipated movies like the Coen Brothers' "Inside Llewyn Davis," as well as debuts of movies like Alfonso Cuaron's "Gravity" and Jason Reitman's "Labor Day."
This initial announcement isn't necessarily the final lineup of movies at the Colorado movie festival. Some other sneak preview premieres of films that will be shown outside of the main program will likely be announced soon. In honor of Telluride's 40th anniversary, there will be an extra day of prigramming, six guest directors including Don Delillo and Salman Rushdie, and a new Werner Herzog Theatre venue.
Here's the full list of movies in the 2013 Telluride lineup:
- "All Is Lost" (directed by J.C. Chandor, U.S., 2013)
- "Before The Winter Chill" (directed by Philippe Claudel, France, 2013)
- "Bethlehem" (directed by Yuval Adler,...
This initial announcement isn't necessarily the final lineup of movies at the Colorado movie festival. Some other sneak preview premieres of films that will be shown outside of the main program will likely be announced soon. In honor of Telluride's 40th anniversary, there will be an extra day of prigramming, six guest directors including Don Delillo and Salman Rushdie, and a new Werner Herzog Theatre venue.
Here's the full list of movies in the 2013 Telluride lineup:
- "All Is Lost" (directed by J.C. Chandor, U.S., 2013)
- "Before The Winter Chill" (directed by Philippe Claudel, France, 2013)
- "Bethlehem" (directed by Yuval Adler,...
- 8/28/2013
- by editorial@zap2it.com
- Pop2it
The 40th anniversary edition of the Telluride Film Festival unveiled its lineup, as per custom, just days in advance of its presentation in the mountains of Colorado. The five-day event begins tomorrow and will include several movies with Oscar ambitions, including the world premiere of Jason Reitman’s Labor Day, starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin.
The Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (pictured above), Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, the Robert Redford movie All is Lost, and the erotic French film Blue is the Warmest Color, all of which premiered at Cannes in May, will make their American debuts at Telluride.
The Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (pictured above), Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, the Robert Redford movie All is Lost, and the erotic French film Blue is the Warmest Color, all of which premiered at Cannes in May, will make their American debuts at Telluride.
- 8/28/2013
- by Jeff Labrecque
- EW - Inside Movies
Apart from the three sneak screening titles that will stir up the buzz in the coming days, Julie Huntsinger and Tom Luddy’s 40th edition of the Telluride Film Festival excels in bringing a concentration of solid docus from the likes of Errol Morris and Werner Herzog who this year cuts the ribbon on a theatre going by his name and introduces Death Row, a pinch of Berlin Film Fest items (Gloria, Slow Food Story, Fifi Howls from Happiness) Palme d’Or winner (this year Abdellatif Kechiche will be celebrated), upcoming Sony Pictures Classics items (Tim’s Vermeer, The Lunchbox), Venice to Telluride to Tiff titles (Bethlehem, Tracks and Under the Skin), the latest Jason Reitman film (Labor Day) and the barely known docu-home-movie whodunit (by helmers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine) The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden which features narration from the likes of Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger and Connie Nielsen.
- 8/28/2013
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
While many film festivals announce their titles weeks or months in advance, the annual Telluride Film Festival saves that list until the day before the festival begins.
As a result, they've just announced this year's slate which includes the world premieres of Jason Reitman's "Labor Day". David Mackenzie's "Starred Up" will also have its debut screening.
Other high profile titles include "Gravity," "Inside Llewyn Davis," "Nebraska," "All Is Lost," "Blue Is The Warmest Color," "Under The Skin," "Tracks" and "The Past". The festival kicks off on August 29th and here's the full list:
All Is Lost (d. J.C. Chandor, U.S., 2013)
Before The Winter Chill (d. Philippe Claudel, France, 2013)
Bethlehem (d. Yuval Adler, Israel, 2013)
Blue Is The Warmest Color (d. Abdellatif Kechiche, France, 2013)
Burning Bush (d. Agnieszka Holland, Czech Republic, 2013)
Death Row: Blaine Milam + Robert Fratta (d. Werner Herzog, U.S., 2013)
Fifi Howls From Happiness (d. Mitra Farahani,...
As a result, they've just announced this year's slate which includes the world premieres of Jason Reitman's "Labor Day". David Mackenzie's "Starred Up" will also have its debut screening.
Other high profile titles include "Gravity," "Inside Llewyn Davis," "Nebraska," "All Is Lost," "Blue Is The Warmest Color," "Under The Skin," "Tracks" and "The Past". The festival kicks off on August 29th and here's the full list:
All Is Lost (d. J.C. Chandor, U.S., 2013)
Before The Winter Chill (d. Philippe Claudel, France, 2013)
Bethlehem (d. Yuval Adler, Israel, 2013)
Blue Is The Warmest Color (d. Abdellatif Kechiche, France, 2013)
Burning Bush (d. Agnieszka Holland, Czech Republic, 2013)
Death Row: Blaine Milam + Robert Fratta (d. Werner Herzog, U.S., 2013)
Fifi Howls From Happiness (d. Mitra Farahani,...
- 8/28/2013
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
Directors and producers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine have wrapped production on "The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden," a murder mystery documentary that features the voices of international stars such as Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen, Josh Radnor, Sebastian Koch, Thomas Kretschmann and Gustaf Skarsgard. Described as an unusual tale of idealistic dreams gone awry set in the brutal yet alluring landscape of the Galapagos Islands, the project interweaves an unsolved 1930s murder mystery with stories of present-day Galapagos pioneers. The then-and-now portrait becomes a parable of the search...
- 6/12/2013
- by Jeff Sneider
- The Wrap
Production has wrapped on the documentary murder-mystery The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came To Eden featuring Cate Blanchett, Sebastian Koch, Thomas Kretschmann and Diane Kruger.
Connie Nielsen, Josh Radnor and Gustaf Skarsgård also feature in the story, which is set on the Galapagos Islands and investigates an unsolved crime.
Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine direct and produce the film.
Jonathan Dana serves as executive producer and handles worldwide sales. Delivery is anticipated by the end of the year.
Connie Nielsen, Josh Radnor and Gustaf Skarsgård also feature in the story, which is set on the Galapagos Islands and investigates an unsolved crime.
Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine direct and produce the film.
Jonathan Dana serves as executive producer and handles worldwide sales. Delivery is anticipated by the end of the year.
- 6/11/2013
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
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