Why I Donated to Spike Lee’s Fundraising Campaign

As of this writing Spike Lee has met his fundraising goal of $1.25 Million and I still felt compelled to donate.

I started to think I could be a filmmaker because of people like Spike Lee. Spike Lee wasn’t the only black filmmaker to inspire me to study film, but he sure was the most consistently influential. Throughout college I could always count on a Spike Lee Joint to inspire me in some way, not just his films, but his interviews and his books. It was inspiring for a young, black man to see this other black man not only making films, but speaking his mind. Him being from Brooklyn where I was born and raised didn’t hurt none.

Since he announced his campaign a lot of detractors have cited his fame and celebrity as reasons he shouldn’t be asking us for money. His celebrity, fame and work ethic in film was a constant reminder to me while I was toiling away in college that I could attain such. Even after receiving my degree in film that celebrity, fame and work ethic has inspired me to continue to study film as I venture into indie filmmaking.

Ultimately though, I decided to donate to his campaign because Spike’s films speak to this black man’s soul.

Sincerely,
Dankwa Brooks
Filmmaker

~epilogue~

Picture of Spike Lee atop my editing suite posted on Facebook November 5, 2009

ADDENDUM

August 29, 2013
I found this December 1996 edition of Black Enterprise magazine while cleaning my house last weekend and thought that it is a PERFECT example of what I meant when I said of Spike Lee that “His celebrity, fame and work ethic in film was a constant reminder to me while I was toiling away in college that I could attain such.” I bought this magazine while I was a screenwriting student at Morgan State University and I still have it!

These kind of African American images kept me going and inspired me in college while I studied screenwriting, transferred to another college to study film and even after college—continue to do so.

November 6, 2013

As I was digitizing some of my old papers from college I found the above! This was for a paper for my Business Communications class in my Freshman year at Morgan State. Yet another example of Spike’s influence on me.

THE FILM

The film wound up being Da Sweet Blood of Jesus. Read more about the film HERE 

2026 Update 

I recently discovered this great Q&A on the official Kickstarter page 

TOP 4 MAJOR QUESTIONS by SPIKE LEEI’m being asked and I’m responding to them the best way I know – with an HONEST ANSWER.

QUESTION #1 – Why are you on Kickstarter? You’re an established wealthy Filmmaker!

I’m an Indie Filmmaker and I will always be an Indie Filmmaker. Indie Filmmakers are always in search of financing because their work, their vision sometimes does not coincide with Studio Pictures. But I do put my own money in my films. I self-financed RED HOOK SUMMER. My fee for MALCOLM X was put back into the budget. The truth is I’ve been doing KICKSTARTER before there was KICKSTARTER, there was no Internet. Social Media was writing letters, making phone calls, beating the bushes. I’m now using TECHNOLOGY with what I’ve been doing.

I had to do a PRE-KICKSTARTER Campaign to get my first feature SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT done way back in 1985. The budget was $175,000. I Had to do a PRE-KICKSTARTER Campaign to get MALCOLM X finished in 1991 when the production ran out of money.

It was people like: PRINCE, JANET JACKSON, TRACY CHAPMAN, PEGGY COOPER CAFRITZ, MS. WINFREY, MAGIC JOHNSON AND MICHAEL JORDAN who STOOD UP, came to our rescue so you could see the MALCOLM X on screen we envisioned. I daresay without that PRE-KICKSTARTER approach Denzel’s epic performance in its entirety would not have seen the light of day. I say this all to say, what we are doing on KICKSTARTER is not new. Indie Filmmmakers need MONEY to do their ART. The ARTFORM of FILM COSTS MONEY. We are appealing to people who have enjoyed and supported my work in the past and would like it to continue into the FUTURE.

[Spike Lee documented the process of making the film in the book ‘By Any Means Necessary: Trials And Tribulations of the Making of Malcolm X’ by Ralph Wiley and Spike Lee. I re-read the book in 2025 and updated my Goodreads review here. —Dankwa Brooks] 

QUESTION #2 – You have never backed anyone on KICKSTARTER so why should we expect you to support us.

For the past 15 years I’ve been a Professor of Film at The NYU Graduate Film School and the Artistic Director for the last 5. What people do not know is that I’ve had a SPIKE LEE PRODUCTION FUND to assist NYU GRAD FILM STUDENTS with grants to do their FILMS. Since the 1989/90 NYU School Year I have given out Production Grants to 44 NYU GRAD FILM students totally over $300,000.

I did not give back KICKSTARTER in the past because I was backing my NYU students. Now that I’m on KICKSTARTER that will change. This narrative that I’m greedy, do not support, care or nurture young Filmmakers is so far from the truth it’s not even funny. I would not be teaching FILM for as long as I have if I didn’t care about young Filmmakers.

QUESTION #3 – Spike, you on KICKSTARTER is hurting the young filmmakers.

This is another fallacy. The fact of the matter is I’m bringing exposure to KICKSTARTER, backers to KICKSTARTER who have never even heard of KICKSTARTER before. The same was true of the VERONICA MARS and ZACH BRAFF’S projects. There was also a study done that had data to prove we did not hurt the young filmmakers on KICKSTARTER either.

QUESTION #4 – Why are you not more forthcoming on the Details of your KICKSTARTER Project?

The reason I have not disclosed more info on the story is because: It’s a THRILLER. In order for a film of this type to work the less details the better for this Film to work with the Audience, they can’t know a whole lot before they sit down in a Theatre to see it. Yeah I know, I’m asking for BACKERS for a film they don’t know a lot about. My answer to that is TRUST ME. I hope you have seen some things over the past 3 decades making FILMS that can earn your TRUST.

What I can tell you is this. I have never made a film like this and it excites me very much. I’m doing a semi-genre film about ADDICTION. These people are ADDICTED to BLOOD. Yet however they are not VAMPIRES. It’s going to be SEXY, HUMOROUS and BLOODY. To me that’s a unique combination.

I hope my answers to your questions have been provided the information you asked for. I totally understand how strange it might seem to look for me, Spike Lee on KICKSTARTER asking for BACKERS. I say – welcome to THE WORLD OF CROWDFUNDING. Whether you like it or not it is not going away. The FUTURE is here.

I deeply appreciate everyone and I mean everyone who has stood up, backed our PROJECT so we can MAKE HISTORY.

Peace and Love,
Spike Lee - Filmmaker

ADDITIONAL

Read more of my posts about Spike Lee here

Read more about Spike Lee's online campaign here

Fruitvale Station - Review

FRUITVALE STATION

Written & Directed by Ryan Coogler

Produced by Nina Yang Bongiovi & Forest Whitaker

Cinematography by Rachel Morrison

Editing by Claudia Castello & Michael P. Shawver

Release date(s): January 19, 2013 (Sundance), July 12, 2013 (United States)




Starring
Michael B. Jordan as Oscar Grant
Octavia Spencer as Wanda
Melonie Diaz as Sophina
Ariana Neal as Tatiana

Summary: The film tells the true story of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old two time convicted felon from Oakland California, and his experiences on the last day of his life, before he was fatally shot by BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) Police in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2009.

REVIEW
This film is a portrait of a young, black man and this portrait closely resembles not myself, but a lot of black men I knew—a lot. For whatever reason they just can't get their life together. Fruitvale Station captures ONE day in a young black man's life, Oscar Grant, yet fully captures what most of the other 364 days of the year must be like.

These young men aren't the scourge of society that the media portrays them to be, but loving, kind individuals. ‘Fruitvale’ doesn’t sugarcoat his character as you get to see that he is a good guy and he has friends and family that loves him. You see the good natured side of Oscar, but you also see the immoral side of Oscar’s personality when he’s threatened or hurt.

Most of the film as such is an intimate portrait. You follow Oscar as he goes about his day and thinks about his life. You see his great interaction with the women in his life, his girlfriend, his daughter and his mother. You see the struggles he has to go through with the other aspects of his life.

Things are not all so reflective as the film builds to its inevitable conclusion as that last part of the film...it's about as heart wrenching as you can get.

The performances are pretty great. From the fresh innocence of Ariana Neal as Oscar’s young daughter Tatiana, to the resilience of his daughter’s mother Sophina played terrifically by Melonie Diaz and a superb performance by Octavia Spencer. Superb! My favorite actor from The Help, Spencer gives another great performance in “Fruitvale’. Some of her scenes could have easily gone over the top, but she plays them with the perfect nuances.

The performance of the film, this film, Fruitvale Station, a story about the late Oscar Grant goes to his portrayer Michael B. Jordan. Jordan gives a complex performance that is often times loving and reflective, but when it’s not—it’s not. It’s almost like Jekyll and Hyde. Like I said earlier, when he is threatened or hurt Jordan’s Oscar is a different person. It is that performance that makes the ending of the film all that more harrowing.

The direction by Ryan Coogler is reflective and nurturing throughout and he does a great job with showing those aspects of Oscar’s character, but again, that ending…Coogler does an amazing job of increasing the tension and then showing the eventual heartbreak of the events. A very impressive feature film debut for Ryan Coogler!

Fruitvale Station is a really good movie that will break your heart by the time it’s finished, but you feel like you know the young man, many like him and what they face in this life.

Additional Links
On Wikipedia you can read more about the real life BART Police shooting of Oscar Grant

Read more news about the film Fruitvale Station at our Sista blog Cool Black Media here

My 2013 Maryland Film Festival Experience

It's been over a month since the 2013 Maryland Film Festival (May 8-12th) and it was a doozy. LOL. In pictures and words my weekend was:

For the record:

Starting in 1999, the Maryland Film Festival is an annual four-day event that takes place the first weekend of each May, presenting top-notch film and video work from all over the world. Each year the festival screens approximately 50 feature films and 75 short films of all varieties -- narrative, documentary, animation, experimental, and hybrid -- to tens of thousands of audience members.   

 In 2013, for its fifteenth anniversary, the festival expanded to five days. 

Celebrity guest hosts from outside the world of film are also invited to present favorite films, including musicians such as Harry Belafonte, Ian MacKaye, Branford Marsalis, Will Oldham, Jonathan Richman, and Bill Callahan.

This year was the 15th Annual Maryland Film Festival. Usually there are four days of the festival, but this year there was FIVE. That means an extra day to see as many films as I could. LOL.

Because the festival expanded, my weekend started early on Wednesday with the festival’s Opening Night Shorts & Party.

Every year the festival opens with a bunch of short films and then a party. This year I wanted to repeat my full festival experience so I wanted to attend all five days and I DID! In reality the only day I spent the whole day at the festival was the last day, Sunday.

Even though I’ve been going to the MFF for nine years this was the best ever!

It started with my favorite poster design for the festival ever. As an artist I appreciate art in all its forms and I thought this design was fantastic! It really encompasses their "Film for everyone" slogan!

2013 MFF poster design. Graphic by Post Typography
(in collaboration with photographer RaRah and 3-D illustrator Jeremy Martin). 

Then I saw this announcement in one of their emails:

Maryland Film Festival (May 8-12 in downtown Baltimore) is proud to announce that acclaimed cinematographer Bradford Young will co-host our 2013 Closing Night screening, presenting Oscilloscope Laboratories' Mother of George alongside director Andrew Dosunmu.  

So a filmmaker whose work I really idolized was going to be at the festival this year and hopefully I would get a chance to meet him! Did I? I wrote a separate post about that here

Again this year during the festival I also shared my experience with the people who follow ‘Nother Brother on our social networks.

Even though the stuff I tweeted is lost in the thousands of tweets in the “Twitterverse” a lot of what I posted , including pictures, are still on the ‘Nother Brother Facebook page, including ALL of my reviews EXCLUSIVELY. Well all except the BEST film I saw which for the first time was posted on Indiewire’s Shadow & Act! Indiewire is a daily news site for the independent film community and a leading source of information on independent films.

From my review of that “Best Film” from the 2013 Maryland Film Festival, “it wasn’t just the best picture I saw at the MFF this year; it is the best picture I’ve seen this year thus far. Really.” Even though my review of the "Best film" is at Shadow & Act, I did write a special epilogue for this blog and it's linked at the bottom.

Other than that “Best film” all the other reviews, some other really good films, are on the ‘Nother Brother Entertainment Facebook Page EXCLUSIVELY including the great Baltimore shot documentary 12 O’clock Boys.

Still from 12 O'clock Boys

I’ve been attending the Maryland Film Festival since 2005 and between the Best Graphic Ever, the opportunity to meet one of my filmmaking idols, some really good films spread over five days and “the best picture I’ve seen this year” I can definitely say that 15th Annual Maryland Film Festival of 2013 was the indeed the BEST EVER!

All links go to Facebook DRAMA SHORTS Several dramatic short films. More description at the link.(DRAMA) OPENING NIGHT SHORTS Several short films of varying genres. More description at the link. IT FELT LIKE LOVE Fourteen-year-old Lila is experiencing a boring Brooklyn summer when she decides to pursue a tough older boy at the expense that her desperation and posturing will carry her too far into unfamiliar territory and she may be forced to confront reality. (DRAMA)  16 ACRES The dramatic inside story of the monumental collision of interests at the Ground Zero in the decade after 9/11 (DOCUMENTARY) A TEACHER When a high school teacher in Texas has an affair with one of her students, her life begins to unravel as the relationship evolves. (DRAMA) 12 O'CLOCK BOYS Pug, a wisecracking 13 year, has one goal in mind: to join The Twelve O’clock Boys; the notorious urban dirt-bike gang of Baltimore. (DOCUMENTARY) VHS 2 Searching for a missing student, two private investigators break into his house and find collection of VHS tapes. Viewing the horrific contents of each  cassette, they realize there may be dark motives behind the student's  disappearance. (HORROR) ZERO CHARISMA A gamer geek feels threatened when a neo-nerd hipster joins his group of gamers and he feels like he will lose his identity as the Game Master. (COMEDY) _________________________________ As stated above here on the 'Nother Brother Entertainment blog you can read more about the... Click the graphic above to read it! See more of my photos from the 2013 Maryland Film Festival here

Related Links
You can see ALL of our posts about the Maryland Film Festival HERE

Cinematographer Bradford Young

Let me tell you about Mr. Young. I’ve been a fan of his for years and in a short amount of time I can see why he has gotten so much acclaim. This is what I said about one of his early works in March 2012.

That project was My Mic Sounds Nice: The Truth About Women in Hip Hop (2010) and this is what I said:
A special came on BET about female emcees in hip hop. My Mic Sounds Nice was clearly the BEST production I ever seen on BET. Period. I liked My Mic Sounds Nice so much because like dream hampton said “partly because the thing looked so good”.

I really didn’t know HE shot that until I looked up the resume of one of his frequent collaborators Ava DuVernay. It was soon though that I found out how talented he was.

Since then I have seen the majority of the feature films Mr. Young has shot and they all look FANTASTIC! Most of them I reviewed.

Those films were:
Restless City (2011)
Pariah (2011)
Middle of Nowhere (2012)
Mother of George (2013)

As you can tell I was well versed in Mr. Young’s work so when I read this in the Maryland Film Festival email I was beyond excited! (Click for bigger view)

I knew if I saw him at the festival I would jump at the chance to meet him. I was chilling in the Filmmaker’s Lounge before my next film that last day of the festival and I saw him chilling scrolling on his cell phone. You know I had to go meet the brother and get his autograph!

Bradford Young's autograph in the 2013 Maryland Film Festival Guide
on the page of the film he  worked on Mother  of George

We talked for about 2 minutes and he was a real cool cat. I didn’t want to disturb him so I gave a few parting words and left him alone. 

Bradford Young. Photo by Jason Putsche

As stated in the email above, later that day Mr. Young co-hosted its 2013 Closing Night screening of Mother of George (pictured above). After seeing the film, which was FANTASTIC, at the Closing Night Party I had to shake his hand again and tell him what great work he had done. (More about Mother of George linked below)

This is the thing. I don’t get excited about meeting “celebrities”. I see them at the festival all the time and sometimes at work. I never go out of my way to introduce myself or ask for pictures/autographs. I’m not that guy. 

There are on few occasions where I get hyped and being a black filmmaker of course it’s when I meet other black filmmakers like Mr. Young. It was a pleasure to meet him and I hope to see him again on the festival circuit. 

Left to Right: Dankwa Brooks and Bradford Young

Come on. You know I took a picture too ;-)

Read what I said about Mother of George here

ADDITIONAL
Bradford Young's Official Website
http://bradfordyoung.com/

Read the New York Times article about Mr. Young below.

He’s Just a ‘Custodian of the Moment’

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

By AMANDA PETRUSICH

May 16, 2012

New York Times

THERE’S a scene early on in “Middle of Nowhere,” one of this year’s Sundance prize-winning films, when a young married couple bicker briefly in the visiting area of a prison: the room is pallid, even clammy, but the actors’ faces are vibrant and vulnerable, held full-frame. It’s a triumphant, even signature moment for the film’s cinematographer, Bradford Young.

“I’m big on faces,” Mr. Young said, his own collapsing into a sweet, easy grin. “I like to fill the frame with heads. I use faces as landscapes, as architecture. That always feels like the right place to start.”

Mr. Young, 34, a New Yorker, is one of a cadre of emerging black filmmakers — including the “Middle of Nowhere” director, Ava DuVernay, and the filmmakers Dee Rees and Tina Mabry — making visually compelling cinema addressing the outliers at the edges of black culture in America. Working mostly outside the auspices of Hollywood, they’re finding new ways to circumvent traditional channels (like using Ms. DuVernay’s distribution company, Affrm, or African American Film Festival Releasing Movement, which will release “Middle of Nowhere” later this year in concert with Participant Media).

“The word that comes to mind when thinking of Bradford’s visual style is ‘lush,’ ” Ms. DuVernay said in an e-mail. “It is full. When I watch people of color in most films, the image is so often flat or partial. Nothing about what Bradford does is partial. Every frame is full-bodied and potent and robust. It’s so exciting because it’s so rare.”

As a storyteller, Mr. Young is preternaturally drawn to marginalization; in nearly all the movies he shoots, including “Restless City,” now getting a national rollout, an outsider contends with an unkind or indifferent world. That fundamental battle — to be acknowledged, to be loved — animates his work as well as his life. Mr. Young’s grandparents were a formative influence; he left Louisville, Ky., at 15 to live with his father in Chicago (“I was a kid from a small town in the mid-South who knew there was better, you know?”), but not before internalizing his grandparents’ high standards.

“There was an intense push for prestige, for intention, in everything we did,” he recalled over coffee in the East Village. “My grandparents were people of their time. They were fighting their own war in a country they wanted to be a part of and weren’t allowed to be a part of. Growing up, I didn’t have the privilege of forgetting that.”

The product of four generations of Kentucky funeral directors (his family’s funeral home opened in 1907, and is one of the oldest continually operating black-owned funeral parlors in the country), Mr. Young eschewed the family business to study film at Howard University, where he worked with the director Daniel Williams. Mr. Young referred to Mr. Williams’s short “A Thousand Days a Year” (2000), about the desire for spirituality in the midst of chaos, as a masterpiece.

“He’s so prolific and is a true independent filmmaker,” Mr. Young said. “I consider him to be the architect of my photographic sensibilities.”

Mr. Young’s creative choices are mindful without feeling deliberate. Each shot serves the narrative in a specific way: a bit of visual information might be purposefully withheld, a camera angle might suggest a slight shift in power.

His distinctive approach, which won him the excellence in cinematography award at Sundance in 2011 (for Ms. Rees’s “Pariah,” a coming-of-age story about a black lesbian in Brooklyn), is the product of learned restraint. He favors raw light and has a penchant for shooting into it, but said he ultimately focuses on getting out of the way.

“That’s how you get something way more authentic, way more cerebral, way more visceral,” he said. “Just be a custodian of the moment. Step back. Watch.”

In “Restless City,” also distributed by Affrm, Djibril (Sy Alassane), a 21-year-old Senegalese immigrant living in Harlem, grapples with self-identification and the odd, devastating loneliness of his new life in New York. For the film, which was directed by the Nigerian-born photographer Andrew Dosunmu, Mr. Young often positioned his camera behind grimy, scratched windows, providing a point of tension between the meticulously costumed characters and the imperfect world they inhabit.

“The spaces of the African immigrant world in New York, they exist through all these layers of plastic and plexiglass; you can walk up and down 115th Street and there are so many establishments where you have to go through curtains, you have to go through all these things to get in,” he explained. “I know that world by peeking through the window: an African-American peeking through the window at Africans of another sort of diaspora.”

Nevertheless, the tension he establishes can feel universal.

“I’m drawn to these films because those are worlds that I know a lot about,” he said. “I feel comfortable in those spaces because I consider myself a marginalized person. I feel like it’s my duty to be a part of those stories. It doesn’t have to be about something abject, it can be about something enlightened, but I want my work to be focused on that bit of metadata — that life is beautiful, but it’s a struggle.”

Mr. Young has gathered considerable accolades from the indie community (as well as beyond it), but he continues to tussle personally with the insularity of the scene. “How independent are we?” he asked. “It’s not just about being free from Hollywood, but are you freeing your mind? Are you freeing your story?”

He is still working on realizing that freedom. Although he’s completed eight features and he’s reading new scripts and working on his first solo art installation, which he said will combine sculptural and motion picture elements, he’s hesitant to define his aesthetic.

“I feel like I’m still in a great discovery process, trying to figure out what it is, ultimately, that I want to say with the camera,” he said. “I’m exploring. I’m looking forward to the day where I can communicate: ‘This is what the intention was. This is what I do.’ It’s been a really fulfilling couple years, but it’s only been a couple years.”

The Best Film I Saw At The 2013 Maryland Film Festival

This will come as NO surprise to people who follow me or 'Nother Brother Entertainment on social networks, but my favorite film of the 2013 Maryland Film Festival was—Mother of George

My review was even published at indiewire blog Shadow & Act
Mother of George was the 2013 Closing Night Film of the Maryland Film Festival and that was perfect because out of the twelve feature films I saw it was BEST. I said more in my review (linked at the bottom) about how much I liked the film, but for the readers of this blog I included this epilogue.

Why I Loved ‘Mother of George’

Every time I see a detailed film about a specific culture in the back of my mind I think that it would be great if we had a film steeped in black culture.

For instance I’m fan of Italian American filmmakers Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. When you view their work, where it deals with their culture, it oozes their culture. Not in any overt way, but in an organic way.

There’s a famous story of Martin Scorsese taking his idea for his 1973 film Mean Streets to renegade filmmaker Roger Corman to finance. Corman said he would finance the film if he made all of his characters black to capitalize on the blaxploitation trend at the time. Scorsese said that this is a film about Italian Americans and completed what is now considered a classic film—elsewhere.  I applaud Scorsese for sticking to his guns in order to represent his culture.

In the famous scene that starts off the 1972 classic The Godfather, there is a festive Italian wedding that is also authentic to the culture. The scene showed the poste (the bag the bride holds at the reception to collect gifts), the tarantella (folk dancing) and someone at the buffet table throwing a sandwich to his friend in the back of the crowd, the reason these receptions were sometimes called “football weddings”.

Personally I think it takes someone specific to the culture to emulate that culture. These little nuances mean a lot to the Italian American culture and surely something only an Italian American director could depict with a good degree of accuracy.

In my review for Mother of George I stated “Cinematographer Bradford Young explained in the Q&A after the film that he and the director [Andrew] Dosunmu, fought and poured over every frame of that sequence because it was important, as it represented the culture, the motherland; and all of their work shows.”

I appreciated all of their hard work and hopefully audiences will feel the same.

Read my full review of Mother of George here

____________________________________________

See photos from the Closing Night presentation by the Director and Cinematographer of Mother of George below

(Photos by Jason Putsche) 

____________________________________________________

Well that’s it, the best film I saw at the 2013 Maryland Film Festival. I have posted more reviews and of the many films I saw, including some of my photos from the festival this year EXCLUSIVELY on the ‘Nother Brother Entertainment Facebook Page in the photo album 2013 Maryland Film Festival

 RELATED LINKS 
Read all industry related news about Mother of George including "How the Film 'Mother of George' Got Made" at our sista blog Cool Black Media here

 UPDATE AUGUST 2013 
In my review of Mother of George I said

Stunning is kind of an understatement to explain the opening of the film, as it has one of the most beautiful traditional Yoruba wedding ceremonies ever captured on film. Cinematographer Bradford Young explained in the Q&A after the film that he and the director Dosunmu, fought and poured over every frame of that sequence because it was important, as it represented the culture, the motherland; and all of their work shows.

Below you can get a taste of what I mean as some, and I mean some, of the wedding is shown in the trailer. You really have to see the wedding scene in its entirety when the film opens in theaters on September 13, 2013.



Read more reaction to the trailer at Shadow & Act at here

 UPDATE: AUGUST 13, 2013 

NEW POSTER

 UPDATE: DECEMBER 2014 

Live tweets from the DVD commentary with Director Andrew Dosunmu, Editor Oriana Soddu and Costume Designer Mobolaji Dawodu.

Shadow & Act Film School

As Shadow & Act puts it

Continuing S&A's mission to give readers glimpses into the worlds of those who contribute their talents to the production and distribution of the many films we all watch and love...

I have to say that they ARE publishing glimpses into the film world—from people of color!

Our mission at 'Nother Brother Entertainment has always been to further propagate diverse images through development of films and part of that included our own glimpses into the filmmaking process through many posts on this blog.

Over the years many of those posts were ported over from Shadow & Act. Now in an effort to consolidate the posts we will be putting new links to such stories right here in this post.

All of our Shadow & Act posts are linked below and again we have many posts about filmmaking and the film business right here on our blog. Peruse our blog to check them out!

MONDAY, MAY 23, 2016

Actors Talk the Acting Process [VIDEOS]

• Check it out right here on our blog here

________________________________________________

April 12, 2013
Interview: Dehanza (Daye) Rogers Talks 'Sweet, Sweet Coutry' (Gbenga Akinnagbe Co-Stars)

Great informative interview with filmmaker Daye Rogers as she talks about her film and how she put the personnel together to make it.

• Read the Shadow & Act interview here

____________________________________________________

February 10, 2013

SimonSays Entertainment - You Know Their Work; Now Discover The Enterprising Artists Behind The Brand 

Great in-depth interview with a Production Company for many films we reviewed here

Night Catches Us

Mother of George

• Read the Shadow & Act interview here

___________________________________________________

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

What Does a Production Designer Do?

_____________________________________________________

MONDAY, JULY 2, 2012

Shadow & Act Filmmaker Diary Series with Matthew Cherry

______________________________________________________

THURSDAY, MAY 31, 2012

Great Interviews About Film Distribution

______________________________________________________

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2011

Black Screenwriters Roundtable

______________________________________________________

WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2011

Inside Industry info with Melee Entertainment

______________________________________________________

TUESDAY, MAY 24, 2011

Inside Scoop on the Development of 'Jumping the Broom'

______________________________________________________

101 Best-Written TV Series Ever

by Kimberly Nordyke, The Hollywood Reporter
June 2, 2013

Tony Soprano is a made man.

The Writer Guild of America East and West on Sunday night revealed its list of 101 best-written TV series ever, and David Chase's The Sopranos, which aired on HBO from 1999-2007, came in at No. 1.

Landing at No. 2 was Seinfeld, created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, which aired on NBC from 1989-98.

Rounding out the top five are the original Twilight Zone, All in the Family and M*A*S*H.

"At their core, all of these wonderful series began with the words of the writers who created them and were sustained by the writers who joined their staffs or worked on individual episodes," WGAW president Chris Keyser and WGAE president Michael Winship said in a joint statement. "This list is not only a tribute to great TV, it is a dedication to all writers who devote their hearts and minds to advancing their craft."

The top 10 shows, as determined through online voting by WGAW and WGAE members, can be found below. .

1. The Sopranos (HBO), created by David Chase

2.  Seinfeld (NBC), created by Larry David & Jerry Seinfeld

3. The Twilight Zone (CBS, 1959), season one writers: Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Robert Presnell Jr., Rod Serling

4. All in the Family (CBS), developed for television by Norman Lear, Based on Till Death Do Us Part, Created by Johnny Speight

5. M*A*S*H (CBS), developed for television by Larry Gelbart

6. The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS), created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns

7. Mad Men (AMC), created by Matthew Weiner

8. Cheers (NBC), created by Glen Charles & Les Charles and James Burrows

9. The Wire (HBO), created by David Simon

10. The West Wing (NBC), created by Aaron Sorkin

The "TV 101" list, a follow-up to the WGA’s 101 Greatest Screenplays, honors "classic, trailblazing series and miniseries, as well as current and critically acclaimed programs, from comedies and dramas to variety/talk and children’s programming."

On Sunday night, the WGAW hosted a special tribute event, panel discussion and reception to formally unveil the list at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills. The event featured a lineup of panelists including iconic TV series creators, showrunners and writers whose shows made the list, including Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues), James L. Brooks (The Mary Tyler Moore Show), Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad), Winnie Holzman (My So-Called Life), Norman Lear (All in the Family), Steven Levitan (Modern Family), Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica), Gail Parent (The Carol Burnett Show), Carl Reiner (The Dick Van Dyke Show), Matthew Weiner (Mad Men) and host-moderator Merrill Markoe (Late Night With David Letterman).

The WGAW’s “101 TV” committee, which conceived the initiative, includes guild members Aaron Mendelsohn (chair), W. Bruce Cameron, Michael Conley, Diane Driscoll, Gary Goldstein, Katherine Fugate, Margaret Howell, Ken Pisani, Ari Rubin and Susan Walter.

For WGA's entire list, click here

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