Donna
“WHEN LAST SEEN” wins award from the NYC Women’s fund/NYFA/MOME
Our team is so chuffed by this award which will give us finishing funds to complete our short movie, “When Last Seen,” an adaptation of the Persephone and Demeter Greek myth using found text to carry the search for the missing daughter into the present.
#NYCWomensFund #MOME
The Relevance of “Nubile”–my latest screenplay
“Ms. Maxwell would refer to the girls she was looking for as “nubiles,” Ms. Farmer said. “They had a driver, and he would be driving along, and Ghislaine would say, ‘Get that girl,’” she said. “And they’d stop, and she’d run out and get the girl and talk to her.”
Lawyers for Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein did not respond to requests for comment for this article.” New York Times
Rehearsals for BAM’s Next Wave
Kevin Newbury in action with The Good Swimmer lifeguards.
Madeline’s Madeline is now available digitally
iTunes, Vimeo, Amazon, etc. Here’s the link from Oscilloscope:
Response to Brett Kavanaugh’s Yearbook. The First Eff.
THE FOUR EFFS
I walk into a classroom. There is no teacher present. Across the blackboard in large chalk letters are the words:
Name the Four F’s.
Everyone else is already seated; paper and pencil poised.
I am confused. Did I forget to study for this quiz? And what subject is this?
A geography question? (I can’t get beyond Finland, France… Fiji…)
Language arts? (All I can think of is the word infinitive.)
Then I noticed that all the boys are laughing and poking each other in the ribs. Jean-Marie Agnold gets up–except now she’s Connie Francis– and erases the board.
The boys throw pencils at her. She hides under the teacher’s desk.
I look at the boys and think “Ffffffff…..Fart!”
At the count of three, all the boys grab a girl.
Walter Donovan grabs my arm because he gave me his lucky rabbit foot two weeks ago and so considers me his girlfriend. All the boys laugh as they try to whisper the answer to the Girl of their Choice
They end up yelling:
“Find ‘em. Feel ‘em. Fuck ‘em. Forget ‘em.” I run home.
Home is a long way away and as I run, I notice Walter Donovan running after me.
No one is on the street And it is suddenly night.
Roots on the path trip me.
I get up and run with Walter on my heels Making “eff” sounds with his mouth.
I make it to the house, slam the door
And scramble up the stairs to our second floor apartment. I run into the kitchen out of breath and begin pulling down all the window shades. My mother is washing dishes and notices Walter outside
Staring up at her.
“Oh, look, “ she says, “Walter Donovan. “Why don’t you ask him in?”
© The First Eff, a stage play, by Donna Di Novelli
Framing this: from Barry Jenkins Twitter feed…
Barry JenkinsVerified account @BarryJenkins
MADELINE’S MADELINE is gnarly as hell, full stop. I don’t know what conventions I could frame this film in nor what films of recent memory I would compare it to. Adventurous, bravura filmmaking, insistently challenging and always evolving.
HELENA HOWARD in MADELINE’S MADELINE is one of the best performances I’ve seen in my whole life. She’s so fucking good in this film that I was genuinely concerned for her.
Madeline’s Madeline Reviewed: From The New Yorker
“Like most other great films, Josephine Decker’s new movie, “Madeline’s Madeline,” which opens Friday, is many things at once—a passionate emotional experience, a conjoined vision of intimate and public life, a reinvention of the very elements of filmmaking. It’s also, incidentally, a decisive repudiation of one of the most enduring film-critical shibboleths: that straightforward storytelling is antithetical to directorial originality.
…
The dramatic clarity and psychological acuity with which Decker (who also co-wrote the film, with Donna di Novelli) conveys the characters and their conflicts is only an infinitesimal part of this vast creation, however. Though “Madeline’s Madeline” runs barely an hour and a half, it packs an epic’s worth of expressive detail, imaginative incident, emotional variety and intensity, and aesthetic invention. The tight bond between the movie’s profusion of closely observed details, fleeting moments of intimate poignancy, grand dramatic passions, and social insight is nearly fractal in its unity, yet it also evokes a sense of spontaneity and artistic discovery at every stage of the cinematic process. That sense of discovery is equally a part of the viewing experience; Decker’s approach to every aspect of cinematic form and composition is as distinctive, as freely inventive, as is her renewal of the movie’s classical subject…”