By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Field of Vision and Firelight Media Producing Doc Shorts Series “Our 100 Days”

Initiative Will Commission and Distribute Short Films Series Reacting to 

Trump’s Election
December 14, 2016 – NEW YORK, NY – Today, Firelight Media and Field of Vision announce “Our 100 Days” a new initiative that will produce and distribute 10 short films to be released in 2017.Our 100 Days” will explore threats to U.S. democracy and the stories of its most vulnerable communities in the current highly polarized political climate. The filmmakers and subjects will be jointly chosen by Field of Vision Executive Producers Laura Poitras, AJ Schnack and Charlotte Cook along with Firelight Media EPs Loira Limbal, Stanley Nelson and Marcia Smith.
“We are proud to launch this initiative that aims to disrupt the march towards normalcy, because for many Americans, there can be no business as usual when extremism is on the rise,” Stanley Nelson, co-founder of Firelight Media.
“Our 100 Days” seeks compelling, investigative or character-driven shorts that address topics such as: political transition, rise in hate crimes, immigration, racial justice, threats to democratic institutions, gender equality, LGBTQ rights, criminal justice, surveillance, climate change and beyond. Filmmakers will be encouraged to examine the current experiences of vulnerable communities, the projected challenges they face, and ways they are adjusting to those challenges as the country enters a new and uncharted landscape.
“Projects can vary in scope but we are especially interested in rapid response pieces that capture this frightening moment in our country. We’ll accept pitches until February 28, 2017and are committed to a speedy greenlighting process,” Laura Poitras, co-creator of Field of Vision.
This inaugural round invites pitches exclusively from the Firelight Documentary Lab community and its diverse group of filmmakers. The initial request for proposals will go live at 10am at Monday, December 13, 2016. Field of Vision and Firelight will provide funding and production support to selected filmmakers. Films will be showcased on Field of Vision with additional distribution partners to be announced.  
“Our 100 Days” will be part of Field of Vision’s fourth season which will debut in 2017.
Firelight Media founder Stanley Nelson’s new film Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities will premiere in the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
About Firelight Media
Firelight produces award-winning films that expose injustice, illuminate the power of community and tell a history seldom told. Firelight connects these films with concrete and innovative ways for diverse audiences to be inspired, educated, and mobilized into action. Firelight’s flagship program is the Documentary Lab, which supports emerging documentary filmmakers from diverse communities that advance underrepresented stories.
About Field of Vision
Co-created by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras, filmmaker AJ Schnack and curator & producer Charlotte Cook, Field of Vision is a filmmaker-driven documentary unit that commissions and creates original short-form nonfiction films about developing and on-going stories around the globe.
About First Look Media
First Look Media is a new-model media company devoted to supporting independent voices across all platforms, from fearless investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking to smart, provocative entertainment. Launched in 2013 by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar, First Look operates as both a studio and digital media company.

 

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon