Lisa Cortés: Last News

EXCLUSIVE: Drake’s DreamCrew Entertainment, producers of Dear Mama, Euphoria, and Top Boy is pleased to announce its association as executive producers with Rosie Filmwaze LLC whose The Melt Goes On Forever: The Art & Times of David Hammons receives its U.S. theatrical premiere at New York’s Film Forum today.

Addie Morfoot Contributor At their best, political documentaries make sense of complex issues. But getting them seen has become more challenging than ever given Hollywood’s preference for celebrity or true-crime nonfiction offerings over anything grappling with thorny, complicated issues or figures. This hasn’t stopped top documentary filmmakers from tackling such topics.

The Concordia Fellowship provides crucial financial and professional support to diverse non-fiction storytellers in sixth class. Concordia Studio, the company behind the acclaimed Emmy-winning documentary film, STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie, directed by founder Davis Guggenheim, is awarding four filmmakers the Concordia Fellowship for 2024.

In a clip from the documentary, Little Richard: I Am Everything, we hear the young entertainer singing an early version of what would become his signature tune, “Tutti Frutti.” But surprise! The original lyrics were different than the ones we know today: “Tutti frutti, good booty/Tutti frutti, good booty!”

SFFilm’s 9th Annual Doc Stories festival is getting underway, featuring a distinguished lineup of Oscar-contending nonfiction films.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor PBS’ “20 Days in Mariupol,” IFC’s “The Disappearance of Shere Hite” and MTV’s “The Eternal Memory” are among DOC NYC‘s 14th edition featuring 114 features and 129 short films. The shortlist for DOC NYC, the largest documentary festival in the U.S., was launched in 2012 and has become a key indicator and predictor for the Academy Awards’ best documentary feature category. Ten out of the last 11 winners for documentary feature were screened at the festival.

Valerie Wu Intern The Urbanworld Film Festival, based in New York City, has released its 2023 slate of screenings and presentations. With HBO and WBD as Founding Partner and Prestige Partner, respectively, the 27th annual festival will take place from Nov. 1 to Nov.

Since NASA’s conception just over six decades ago, 600 astronauts have traveled to space, yet only 18 have been Black Americans. Hindered in equal parts by racial discrimination and the lack of educational and economic resources given to the Black community in the space administration’s formative years led to a significant racial disparity among those who aimed to reach for the stars.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change based on buzz and events.

UPDATE: CNN has scheduled the premiere of Lisa Cortés’ Little Richard: I Am Everything for September 4.

EXCLUSIVE: Magnolia Pictures has acquired U.S. rights to Invisible Beauty, the Sundance world premiere documentary about the career of pioneering African American model and fashion icon Bethann Hardison.

William Earl Variety and Rolling Stone have announced additional speakers and programming for the Truth Seekers Summit presented by Showtime, which will take place in New York City and virtually on Aug. 2. Newly added programming includes “The Art of Investigative Storytelling” panel, which will take a look at the creative minds behind breakout investigative and true crime storytelling. The panel will feature Tracy Pattin, co-producer and host, “Hollywood and Crime”; Shannon Evangelista, executive producer, “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace”; Sarah Amos, VP, development and production (non-fiction TV, documentaries), Condé Nast Entertainment and executive producer, “The Secrets of Hillsong”; and Mike Gasparro, executive producer, “Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets” and “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal.”

Murtada Elfadl Taking on an expansive topic, the contribution of Black astronauts to the American space program, Lisa Cortés and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza’s “The Space Race” derives its strength from the specific and detailed stories of its subjects. Spanning almost 60 years of historical narrative and concentrating on a handful of scientists who broke barriers, the National Geographic doc is the type that makes the audience question how they have never heard of these people before. Cortés and de Mendoza interweave archival footage with the testimony of the astronauts in a fast-paced and informative way. Rapidly unraveling the fascinating story, they demand the audience’s attention and reward it. Blink or look away for a second and an interesting factoid might be missed. But their greatest asset proves to be the astronauts themselves. Their recollections are emotional and humorous, going a long way to paint such a captivating narrative. The astronauts talk of the weight of being an example and the challenges of having to navigate both white and Black spaces in order to succeed. Yet most movingly, they talk of the camaraderie born of being together in these hallowed and mostly white spaces.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Taormina Film Festival, one of Italy’s oldest movie celebrations, has undergone many makeovers through the years. Held since the mid-1950s in the Sicilian resort that recently got a promotional boost as the location of “The White Lotus” Season Two, this storied summer fest boasts an 8,000-seat open-air ancient Greek amphitheater in the shadow of Sicily’s active Mt. Etna volcano. In 2000, Tom Cruise stood on stage, greeted by hundreds of lit candles and a standing ovation to celebrate his 38th birthday while he was promoting “Mission: Impossible 2.” Ups and downs followed, as several chiefs took the Taormina reins over the the ensuing decades, until more recently the event fell off the international radar.

Flavio Gomez pmc-editorial-manager Variety and Rolling Stone return with their Truth Seekers Summit presented by SHOWTIME® on Aug. 2 in New York City, which will feature such headlining names as Rachel Maddow, Roy Wood, Jr., Dawn Porter and Liz Garbus. Maddow, host of the Emmy Award-winning “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, will be honored with the 2023 Variety and Rolling Stone Truth Seekers Award, recognizing her extensive accomplishments in journalism, followed by a Q&A about her experience in the news industry. “The Rachel Maddow Show” has won three Emmy Awards, and Maddow individually has received seven Emmy nominations honoring her in-depth and thorough take on the biggest stories of the day and week. Maddow has also written, produced and hosted three original podcasts for MSNBC – “Rachel Maddow Presents: Bag Man,” which won a DuPont Columbia Award and was nominated for a Peabody Award in 2020; “Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra,” which received the first-ever Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism for a podcast in 2023; and, most recently, the six-episode series “Rachel Maddow Presents: Deja News,” which debuts June 12, 2023.

The Italian premieres of Cannes Film Festival opener Jeanne du Barry starring Johnny Depp and Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny will be among the international highlights of the 69th Taormina Film Festival which gave a taster of its line-up at press conference in Rome on Tuesday.

and women, ultimately marrying his bride Ernestine.Richard Wayne Penniman, who died in 2020, was many things, hence the revealing new documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything, directed and produced by Lisa Cortés (All In: The Fight for Democracy), who sought to capture the mercurial musician’s many contradictions and put into perspective his undeniable cultural impact.“I realized that in looking at Richard’s history, he’s like, I always say, a pendulum,” says Cortés. “He’s going back and forth. He’s out, he bursts on the scene.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Connecticut is set to declare Sunday, April 23, 2023 as “Little Richard Day” in honor of the late performer’s “incomparable contributions to the history of music in America.” And no, the rock n’ roll icon doesn’t hail from the Nutmeg state. He was born in Georgia and lived in California, Tennessee and other ports of call until his death in 2020. Rather, Gov. Ned Lamont is issuing the proclamation in recognition of the release this month of “Little Richard: I Am Everything” and Connecticut’s many ties to the production. The film, which Magnolia bought out of the Sundance Film Festival, will premiere at the Bedford Playhouse, which is hosted by the Greenwich International Film Festival on April 23. It was produced by Greenwich International Film Festival board member Robert Friedman and produced and directed by Lisa Cortés, a Connecticut native and an alumna of Yale University.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Little Richard — music icon, legend and the man behind hits such as “Tutti Frutti” and “Good Golly Miss Molly” — inspired a generation. But despite his success, there were points in his career where “he doesn’t feel he’s been recognized,” says filmmaker Lisa Cortés. Her latest documentary, “Little Richard: I Am Everything,” in theaters on April 21, seeks to remind a new generation of his legacy. Cortés says the documentary draws parallels with “All In: The Fight for Democracy” which she co-directed with Liz Garbus, in which she followed Stacy Abrams on her political campaign. Speaking with Variety, she said, “Both of these films are talking about issues that are political hot buttons. There are states where Black and queer history are under attack, and they’re passing laws against the teaching of this history. We see those are very important parts of Richard’s origin story and of rock ‘and’n’ roll.” She adds, “It’s a film that is still in conversation with many major things that we are facing right now.”

“Good Golly, Miss Molly,” Little Richard wailed about a bad girl who “sure like to ball.”But no doubt — it was the late rock legend who was a sex fiend himself.“I had all these orgies going on,” he reveals in the new documentary “Little Richard: I Am Everything,” which has a special one-night-only opening in theaters on Tuesday before hitting additional cinemas and pay-per-view on April 21.He was thirsty for both men and women: “I just loved whatever came. You know, I didn’t refuse nothin’ if you knocked on my door and I wanted more.

EXCLUSIVE: For NASA’s pioneering Black astronauts, gravity wasn’t the only barrier impeding them from reaching the highest heights. They also faced another implacable force, in the form of racial bias.