Cinereach Blog

Adella Ladjevardi of Cinereach will Moderate November 18th DocuClub

Below we’ve posted an announcement from DocuClub about their November session. Cinereach’s Grants Manager, Adella Ladjevardi, will guest moderate.

From DocuClub:

Once again, we are thrilled to partner with Tribeca All Access for our November DocuClub. The screening will take place on Wednesday, November 18, 7 p.m., at the Tribeca Cinemas, located at 54 Varick Street (corner of Laight, on block below Canal). You can take the 1, A, C, E, trains to Canal Street.

We will screen a rough cut of BEIJING TAXI by Miao Wang. The feature-length documentary vividly portrays the ancient capital of China going through a profound transformational arch. Through a humanistic lens, the intimate lives of three taxi drivers thread through the morphing city of Beijing confronted with modern issues and changing values. Though each faced with their own struggles with modernity, the three characters radiate a warm sense of humanity. With stunning imagery of Beijing combined with a contemporary score rich in atmosphere, the audience experiences a visceral sense of the common citizens’ persistent attempts to grasp the elusive. Its society is living through enormous contradictions adjusting to a new capitalist system from a Communist-ruled and educated society. BEIJING TAXI uses the Olympic games as the backdrop for the film. The Olympics is the biggest metaphor and China’s coming-out party to mark this era of China in transition. Candid and perceptive in its filming approach and highly cinematic and moody in style, BEIJING TAXI takes us on a lyrical journey into fragments of a society riding the bumpy roads to modernization. Though the destination is unknown, they continue to forge ahead.

Born and raised in Beijing, Director Miao Wang immigrated to the United States in 1990. Her first documentary, YELLOW OX MOUNTAIN, has screened at over twenty festivals, received a Best Short Film Award and a broadcast on WNET Thirteen. Wang has worked as an assistant at Maysles Films, and has edited documentaries for PBS and programs for National Geographic. For BEIJING TAXI, Wang has received grants from the Sundance Documentary Fund, the Jerome Foundation, and the New York State Council for the Arts. She has participated in the IFP Filmmaker’s Lab, Tribeca All Access, and Independent Film Week and currently splits her time between New York and Beijing. BEIJING TAXI is her first feature-length documentary.

Producer Ivana Stolkiner was born in Argentina, and moved to New York in 1998. After graduating with honors from Hunter College’s film program in 2004, Stolkiner assisted the producers of Kartemquin Films in several award-winning documentaries–MAPPING STEM CELL RESEARCH: TERRA INCOGNITA, MILKING THE RHINO and IN THE FAMILY, among others. She has assisted Engel Entertainment in films for the Discovery Channel and National Geographic, and has also served as an associate producer at Pacific Street for the documentaries IN DEBT WE TRUST and BEYOND WISE GUYS.

Editor Sikay Tang received her film training with Spike Lee’s production of JUNGLE FEVER (1991) and MALCOM X (1992). A year later, during the making of her first video, Tang began her interest in film editing. Her editing credits include the documentaries CHISHOLM 72: UNBOUGHT AND UNBOSSED (2004) by Shola Lunch, and THE GOOD SOLDIER (2009) by Michael Uys and and Lexy Lovell. Tang works as a film and video editor and lives in New York City.

Our moderator will be Adella Ladjevardi, Grants Manager at Cinereach, a not-for-profit organization that facilitates the creation of films that “challenge, excite, innovate, offer new perspectives and inspire action.” Most recently, she was the Associate Producer for 2009’S MY NEIGHBOR, MY KILLER, a documentary feature by Emmy-award winner Anne Aghion. Ladjevardi was also Associate Producer for the four-hour cut of acclaimed filmmaker Jennifer Fox’s 2008 documentary mini-series FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN, broadcast on the BBC and SBS; and served as the Distribution and Outreach Manager for the educational and non-theatrical markets for FLYING’s six-hour version. Prior to working with Fox, Adella worked for three years in marketing and publicity at documentary film distributor Icarus Films. She was also Associate Producer of Tanaz Eshaghian’s 2002 short doc I CALL MYSELF PERSIAN: IRANIANS IN AMERICA, broadcast on PBS and screened at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight. Ladjevardi received a BFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Desig

Admission is free for current DocuClub members and $6 for non-members.

If you plan to attend, please RSVP to docuclub@artsengine.net.

Membership is an annual $50 and it includes free admission to all DocuClub events. It takes five minutes to join online at www.artsengine.net/store/#tools_consul.

About DocuClub
DocuClub is Arts Engine’s monthly film screening series of works-in-progress documentaries. For more info, please go to: www.docuclub.org.