At the start of “Alex’s War,” a documentary about Alex Jones, we see the infamous talk-news conspiracist guru of InfoWars described by various media outlets as “a performance artist,” a purveyor of “paranoia porn,” and — in the words of John Oliver — “the Walter Cronkite of shrieking bat-shit guerrilla clowns.” All of which, of course, is accurate. Yet none of it fully captures what an important figure Alex Jones has become, even as he’s been systematically deplatformed.
A couple of decades ago, when he was on the rise as the ranting scourge of “globalism” and other evils, most of us dismissed Alex Jones as an outlier and a self-promoting blowhard who was ultimately a trivial voice shouting from the wilderness of his extreme beliefs. There was no denying that he had the charisma of a right-wing fire-breather like Michael Savage. But the defining quality of Alex Jones was a willingness — more than that,...
A couple of decades ago, when he was on the rise as the ranting scourge of “globalism” and other evils, most of us dismissed Alex Jones as an outlier and a self-promoting blowhard who was ultimately a trivial voice shouting from the wilderness of his extreme beliefs. There was no denying that he had the charisma of a right-wing fire-breather like Michael Savage. But the defining quality of Alex Jones was a willingness — more than that,...
- 7/30/2022
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Click here to read the full article.
Streamer Discovery+ revealed Wednesday that it has purchased Unprecedented, documentary filmmaker Alex Holder’s three-part series on former president Donald Trump’s re-election campaign that has gained the attention of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“Alex Holder’s Unprecedented three-part docuseries about the 2020 election will be released on Discovery+ later this summer,” a Discovery+ spokesperson said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday. The streamer touts that the series features “never-before-seen footage of the Trump family on the campaign trail and their reactions to the outcome of the election” and offers “intimate and unprecedented interviews with Trump, his family and others who were in the White House.” No release date was provided.
Discovery+ originally purchased rights to the docuseries in 2021. Deadline was the first to report the news.
After announcing Tuesday that raw...
Streamer Discovery+ revealed Wednesday that it has purchased Unprecedented, documentary filmmaker Alex Holder’s three-part series on former president Donald Trump’s re-election campaign that has gained the attention of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“Alex Holder’s Unprecedented three-part docuseries about the 2020 election will be released on Discovery+ later this summer,” a Discovery+ spokesperson said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday. The streamer touts that the series features “never-before-seen footage of the Trump family on the campaign trail and their reactions to the outcome of the election” and offers “intimate and unprecedented interviews with Trump, his family and others who were in the White House.” No release date was provided.
Discovery+ originally purchased rights to the docuseries in 2021. Deadline was the first to report the news.
After announcing Tuesday that raw...
- 6/22/2022
- by Katie Kilkenny
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Record label Mexican Summer has cut ties with Ariel Pink after the indie musician drew criticism for attending the pro-Trump rally in Washington D.C. earlier this week.
“Due to recent events, Mexican Summer and its staff have decided to end our working relationship with Ariel Rosenberg Aka Ariel Pink moving forward,” Mexican Summer tweeted Friday.
Due to recent events, Mexican Summer and its staff have decided to end our working relationship with Ariel Rosenberg Aka Ariel Pink moving forward.
— Mexican Summer (@MexicanSummer) January 8, 2021
The label had released Pink’s most recent album,...
“Due to recent events, Mexican Summer and its staff have decided to end our working relationship with Ariel Rosenberg Aka Ariel Pink moving forward,” Mexican Summer tweeted Friday.
Due to recent events, Mexican Summer and its staff have decided to end our working relationship with Ariel Rosenberg Aka Ariel Pink moving forward.
— Mexican Summer (@MexicanSummer) January 8, 2021
The label had released Pink’s most recent album,...
- 1/9/2021
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
Editor’s note: “Tfw No Gf” is one of more than 100 movies originally scheduled to screen at the SXSW Film Festival in March. After the coronavirus outbreak forced the festival to cancel, event organizers partnered with Amazon Prime to make seven of those features available to stream for free through Wed., May 6.
The coronavirus lockdown has accomplished something surreal: It has put almost the entire country in the same position as a small segment of people known as NEETs, an acronym that signifies those “Not in Education, Employment or Training.” But who are these folks who don’t work, don’t study, don’t contribute to society even under normal circumstances?
Director Alex Lee Moyer asks the same question, but without the sensationalistic dimension the news media typically uses when covering the phenomenon, wherein young white men — a group for whom opportunity has traditionally been most accessible — have been checking...
The coronavirus lockdown has accomplished something surreal: It has put almost the entire country in the same position as a small segment of people known as NEETs, an acronym that signifies those “Not in Education, Employment or Training.” But who are these folks who don’t work, don’t study, don’t contribute to society even under normal circumstances?
Director Alex Lee Moyer asks the same question, but without the sensationalistic dimension the news media typically uses when covering the phenomenon, wherein young white men — a group for whom opportunity has traditionally been most accessible — have been checking...
- 5/6/2020
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Pity the poor young white man. They are unemployed. They’re living at home in record numbers. They’re not having sex (or at least, they’re not having particularly good sex). And they are unhappy — sometimes miserably, aggressively so — with a portion of them turning to the darkest abysses of the internet to find solace and to commiserate about their anger and resentment toward women, people of color, and more generally, the fabric of society itself.
These men are most commonly referred to as “incels,” short for “involuntarily celibate,...
These men are most commonly referred to as “incels,” short for “involuntarily celibate,...
- 5/4/2020
- by EJ Dickson
- Rollingstone.com
On Monday, Amazon Prime launched a streaming version of the SXSW Film Festival, partnering with the Austin-based event to deliver a handful of movies free until May 6.
In theory, it’s a brilliant solution: Going virtual gives any cinephile access to the spring’s coolest pop-culture gathering — a gathering at which no one was actually able to gather this year, as SXSW became the first domino to fall in the still-cascading line of public events canceled by the coronavirus.
Many more festivals, from Hot Docs (which will do a geo-localized online version of the fest exclusively for Ontario audiences) to Fantasia, are looking to go the same route. Also on Monday, the Tribeca Institute announced a partnership between more than 20 film festivals, whereby YouTube will host something called the We Are One global film festival, starting May 29.
Trouble is, in practice, this approach isn’t so great. Check out the SXSW package on Amazon,...
In theory, it’s a brilliant solution: Going virtual gives any cinephile access to the spring’s coolest pop-culture gathering — a gathering at which no one was actually able to gather this year, as SXSW became the first domino to fall in the still-cascading line of public events canceled by the coronavirus.
Many more festivals, from Hot Docs (which will do a geo-localized online version of the fest exclusively for Ontario audiences) to Fantasia, are looking to go the same route. Also on Monday, the Tribeca Institute announced a partnership between more than 20 film festivals, whereby YouTube will host something called the We Are One global film festival, starting May 29.
Trouble is, in practice, this approach isn’t so great. Check out the SXSW package on Amazon,...
- 4/30/2020
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
At the start of April, SXSW and Amazon announced that films from this year’s canceled SXSW would stream for free on Prime Video, giving some filmmakers the opportunity to get their projects seen by Us audiences after the Covid-19 pandemic nixed plans for the annual festival, and now the full lineup has been confirmed.
Only a small section of filmmakers who were set to debut their titles at SXSW have taken Amazon up on its streaming offer, but 39 projects will be available to watch from April 27 to May 6.
“This is really an unprecedented time. People are waiting for the new normal. And others are waiting for the return to normal,” SXSW director of film Janet Pierson remarked to THR. “We’re just trying to make best of a complicated situation. And this was a concrete and exciting offer from Amazon to give a wider swath of filmmakers an opportunity...
Only a small section of filmmakers who were set to debut their titles at SXSW have taken Amazon up on its streaming offer, but 39 projects will be available to watch from April 27 to May 6.
“This is really an unprecedented time. People are waiting for the new normal. And others are waiting for the return to normal,” SXSW director of film Janet Pierson remarked to THR. “We’re just trying to make best of a complicated situation. And this was a concrete and exciting offer from Amazon to give a wider swath of filmmakers an opportunity...
- 4/22/2020
- by Kirsten Howard
- Den of Geek
Online film festival to include narrative and documentary features, shorts and episodics.
Udated: A little over five percent of the 135 features originally selected for SXSW 2020 have opted in to Amazon Prime Video and SXSW’s Prime Video presents the SXSW 2020 Film Festival Collection, set to stream from April 27-May 6.
The online festival will comprise 39 films overall – seven narrative and documentary features, short films and episodic titles – and will be available in front of the Prime Video paywall, free to all Us audiences with or without an Amazon Prime membership.
Prior to Tuesday’s publication of the list, several leading sales...
Udated: A little over five percent of the 135 features originally selected for SXSW 2020 have opted in to Amazon Prime Video and SXSW’s Prime Video presents the SXSW 2020 Film Festival Collection, set to stream from April 27-May 6.
The online festival will comprise 39 films overall – seven narrative and documentary features, short films and episodic titles – and will be available in front of the Prime Video paywall, free to all Us audiences with or without an Amazon Prime membership.
Prior to Tuesday’s publication of the list, several leading sales...
- 4/21/2020
- by 36¦Jeremy Kay¦54¦
- ScreenDaily
Editors’ Note: With full acknowledgment of the big-picture implications of a pandemic that already has claimed thousands of lives, cratered global economies and closed international borders, Deadline’s Coping With Covid-19 Crisis series is a forum for those in the entertainment space grappling with myriad consequences of seeing a great industry screech to a halt. The hope is for an exchange of ideas and experiences, and suggestions on how businesses and individuals can best ride out a crisis that doesn’t look like it will abate any time soon. If you have a story, email mike@deadline.com.
When Amazon Prime Video and SXSW announced they were partnering to provide an online screening platform to rescue the festival’s content following its cancellation, not every filmmaker felt confident. Amazon Prime Video would, for a 10-day period, allow its entire audience to view these films previously privy only to those who gained SXSW festival entry. Some filmmakers wondered if they wanted to allow broad online viewing of their as-yet unreleased films. How would they market them if they’d been seen already? But one filmmaker who has opted in to this new “virtual festival” plan, the lineup of which will be unveiled Tuesday, is Alex Lee Moyer. Bringing her film Tfw No Gf to SXSW Prime Video is a gift, she points out, and this time of uncertainty and change could bring increased connectivity and positivity for independent filmmakers. Here, in her own op-ed, she explains her decision to embrace the virtual festival.
More from DeadlineTwo SXSW-Awarded Films Among 70 From Canceled Festivals To Be Screened For Sales Agents, Distributors By Stage 32Sxsw Debut Nixed, Rod Lurie-Directed Afghan War Thriller 'The Outpost' Lands Screen Media DealSundance Pic 'Miss Juneteenth' To Hit Screens In June With Vertical Entertainment Deal
***
In a recent interview, my fellow filmmaker Maureen Bharoocha bemoaned the cancellation of Swsw, along with her film’s premiere. “That night never happened,” she was quoted as saying. “Instead, the world was hit with a pandemic and life was canceled.”
But really Maureen, was it?
I’m posing this question sincerely, because I went through the same experience. I felt the loss, the uncertainty, but I arrived at a very different conclusion. I was recently considering the hope that we’ll expand our connections and creativity as a group, and that hope was bolstered when SXSW and Amazon announced that they were partnering to provide a virtual festival instead of SXSW. I was being given an opportunity to screen my first film as a director, Tfw No Gf—a tiny, but I think important, film about a subculture of alienated youth that was made on a shoestring budget, a wing and a prayer—on the world’s largest media platform to an untold, huge audience. To me, it was simply exciting. But many others responded with worry: Why would a big studio or platform or distributor then invest in a film that’s already been glimpsed by the masses in this virtual festival format? Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
But in this case, that metaphor is flawed. I’m not selling milk, I’m sharing stories. And while real-life, non-virtual festivals are a vital, important component of keeping cinema alive— incubating creativity and nurturing its participants—we as filmmakers ought to keep in mind the true spirit of this venture. We talk about the value of storytelling, but who are we making these stories for? Other filmmakers? The industry? No, we’re making them for audiences.
And most of us are not making giant blockbusters that need to be rolled out as quickly as possible, with the most marketing, to the most screens, to reach the most people, before that tiny window of mainstream public attention passes, and before people discover that film maybe wasn’t even good. Our films are small seeds, that, if we are lucky, can grow with the nourishment of exposure and word of mouth. For independent filmmakers, we need to be seen to exist.
What has happened has been unprecedented and requires unprecedented solutions. For those fearful they will be rejected by the Hollywood establishment for taking a chance and showing your work directly to the public at large for a limited time—especially under these extraordinary circumstances—I implore you to envision a different model. Everything is different now. We don’t know what will happen. And as independent filmmakers, we’re the ones who can take risks. It is the responsibility of the film community to challenge the status quo in order to support our filmmakers and our audiences. Our real audiences. The ones we’ll never meet.
Lastly, there has never been a more opportune moment than this one. We are all confined to our homes, desperate for optimism, creativity and connection, and ultimately, that is what my film Tfw No Gf was about—the ways we are turning to the modern miracle of the Internet as a surrogate for lost connection. Content creators have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to answer a calling. So I applaud SXSW for recognizing that opportunity, taking a risk, and making good on their promise to support the filmmakers. After all, that’s what festivals are for.
When Amazon Prime Video and SXSW announced they were partnering to provide an online screening platform to rescue the festival’s content following its cancellation, not every filmmaker felt confident. Amazon Prime Video would, for a 10-day period, allow its entire audience to view these films previously privy only to those who gained SXSW festival entry. Some filmmakers wondered if they wanted to allow broad online viewing of their as-yet unreleased films. How would they market them if they’d been seen already? But one filmmaker who has opted in to this new “virtual festival” plan, the lineup of which will be unveiled Tuesday, is Alex Lee Moyer. Bringing her film Tfw No Gf to SXSW Prime Video is a gift, she points out, and this time of uncertainty and change could bring increased connectivity and positivity for independent filmmakers. Here, in her own op-ed, she explains her decision to embrace the virtual festival.
More from DeadlineTwo SXSW-Awarded Films Among 70 From Canceled Festivals To Be Screened For Sales Agents, Distributors By Stage 32Sxsw Debut Nixed, Rod Lurie-Directed Afghan War Thriller 'The Outpost' Lands Screen Media DealSundance Pic 'Miss Juneteenth' To Hit Screens In June With Vertical Entertainment Deal
***
In a recent interview, my fellow filmmaker Maureen Bharoocha bemoaned the cancellation of Swsw, along with her film’s premiere. “That night never happened,” she was quoted as saying. “Instead, the world was hit with a pandemic and life was canceled.”
But really Maureen, was it?
I’m posing this question sincerely, because I went through the same experience. I felt the loss, the uncertainty, but I arrived at a very different conclusion. I was recently considering the hope that we’ll expand our connections and creativity as a group, and that hope was bolstered when SXSW and Amazon announced that they were partnering to provide a virtual festival instead of SXSW. I was being given an opportunity to screen my first film as a director, Tfw No Gf—a tiny, but I think important, film about a subculture of alienated youth that was made on a shoestring budget, a wing and a prayer—on the world’s largest media platform to an untold, huge audience. To me, it was simply exciting. But many others responded with worry: Why would a big studio or platform or distributor then invest in a film that’s already been glimpsed by the masses in this virtual festival format? Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
But in this case, that metaphor is flawed. I’m not selling milk, I’m sharing stories. And while real-life, non-virtual festivals are a vital, important component of keeping cinema alive— incubating creativity and nurturing its participants—we as filmmakers ought to keep in mind the true spirit of this venture. We talk about the value of storytelling, but who are we making these stories for? Other filmmakers? The industry? No, we’re making them for audiences.
And most of us are not making giant blockbusters that need to be rolled out as quickly as possible, with the most marketing, to the most screens, to reach the most people, before that tiny window of mainstream public attention passes, and before people discover that film maybe wasn’t even good. Our films are small seeds, that, if we are lucky, can grow with the nourishment of exposure and word of mouth. For independent filmmakers, we need to be seen to exist.
What has happened has been unprecedented and requires unprecedented solutions. For those fearful they will be rejected by the Hollywood establishment for taking a chance and showing your work directly to the public at large for a limited time—especially under these extraordinary circumstances—I implore you to envision a different model. Everything is different now. We don’t know what will happen. And as independent filmmakers, we’re the ones who can take risks. It is the responsibility of the film community to challenge the status quo in order to support our filmmakers and our audiences. Our real audiences. The ones we’ll never meet.
Lastly, there has never been a more opportune moment than this one. We are all confined to our homes, desperate for optimism, creativity and connection, and ultimately, that is what my film Tfw No Gf was about—the ways we are turning to the modern miracle of the Internet as a surrogate for lost connection. Content creators have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to answer a calling. So I applaud SXSW for recognizing that opportunity, taking a risk, and making good on their promise to support the filmmakers. After all, that’s what festivals are for.
- 4/21/2020
- by Antonia Blyth
- Deadline Film + TV
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