Climate Change and the Media
DEUTSCHE WELLE GLOBAL MEDIA FORUM 2010, 21-23 JUNE 2010, BONN, GERMANY
I will be speaking on a panel at the conference on Monday morning, June 21. The topic of our panel, hosted by Deutsche Welle, is "Sex, Drugs, and Climate Change."
Hope to see you at this important conference!
www.dw-gmf.de
L'Etranger TV Series
The breakthrough Moroccan TV series that Tom Schlesinger and I co-created with Simo Marouazzi and Layla Triqui at Thelsem Production in Rabat is finally finished!
Tom and I acted a head writers on the series in 2007, and I took on an additional role as a co-producer of the series. The shooting of the series (34 40-minute episodes) took place during 2008-2009 in locations all over Morocco. It is an unprecedented series in its ambition, its complex construction, the logistics of its production, and the sophistication of its production design relative to other productions coming from that entire region. The series is already subtitled in English and French. L'Etranger will have its premiere in October during the holiday month of Ramadan. A promotional blitz is already underway for this major event.
Next plans include a theatrical feature film version of the series. I will probably spend the month of August in Rabat structuring out the feature film.
Feature Film Projects
I am working on two new feature film projects that I plan to direct as well as write, and I find myself having some new reflections on what drama means to me. As a seminar leader and consultant, my job is to be flexible, to be able to help a writer no matter what idiom, genre, style, or budget he or she is working in, with whatever character/plot/theme challenges. I have to find the objectivity to stand back and ask what will serve the story.
With my own personal projects, the question becomes: what authorial choices are best suited to what I have to express? One of these projects is very contemporary, gritty, and in a realistic idiom—while the second is an adaptation of a novel that mixes romanticism and expressionism as they both move through the life of a painter.
As contracts are pending, this small sketch of what's coming will have to suffice for now.
