A film by Lavinia Currier Based on the memoir by Louis ... - FDb.cz

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In 2004, <strong>Currier</strong> moved with her family to Italy to work with Tonino Guerra, the legendary Italian screenwriter who collaborated with many of the world’s leading <strong>film</strong> directors, including Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Andrei Tarkovsky. They together produced a screen play, The Butterfly Seller, based on true experiences of Abkhazia refugees camped in an abandoned luxury hotel in the Democratic Republic of Georgia. The plot centers on a young girl surviving life in a crumbling building packed with families, drug dealers and Mafia. As <strong>Currier</strong> scouted locations with Russian cinematographer Aleksei Rodionov during the aftermath of Georgia’s “Rose Revolution,” the government’s abrupt ban on foreign cameras halted the project. <strong>Currier</strong> turned instead to a story inspired <strong>by</strong> renowned ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno and the Bayaka pygmies whom she had encountered on her first trip to the Central Africa Republic (CAR) as a World Wildlife Fund board member. She retrieved Sarno’s unpublished memoir from his mother’s New Jersey home and together they created the <strong>film</strong> script for OKA!, an evocative fable set in the tropical forests of the Congo River basin. Spurred <strong>by</strong> memories of her Georgia shutdown, <strong>Currier</strong> defied last-minute political and civil conflicts that made few actors willing to <strong>film</strong> in the remote Dzanga Sangha forest reserve in southwestern CAR. In 2009, her cast and crew survived nearly 4 months in a jungle tent camp during rainy season besieged <strong>by</strong> poisonous snakes, insects, illness, muddy roads and unhappy government officials who three times closed down production of only the second <strong>film</strong> ever shot in the CAR. The <strong>film</strong>’s captivating wildlife images include a scene <strong>Currier</strong> directed with wild elephants and actors in a natural forest clearing with support from the prominent elephant researcher Andrea Tarkalo. In both her full-length features, <strong>Currier</strong> explores a central male figure confronting the powers of nature outside the moorings of his own culture. Her OKA! character Larry Whitman, inspired <strong>by</strong> Sarno, is a tall man in a world made for short people carrying recording equipment among forest people famous for their incredibly acute hearing. She directed the Bayaka in their acting debuts <strong>by</strong> appealing to their sensitive emotional natures and skillfully engaging them in the storytelling so her cast never disappeared back into the forest before the finish. The first cut of OKA! screened at the 2010 Telluride <strong>film</strong> festival, and the final cut premiered at the 2011 Washington DC Environmental Film Festival. <strong>Lavinia</strong> <strong>Currier</strong> continues her philanthropic work in support of environmental initiatives. Her support of Tibetan refugees earned the International Campaign for Tibet’s Light of Truth Award presented <strong>by</strong> the Dalai Lama. She is executive producer of the acclaimed documentary <strong>film</strong> The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom (2010). Her <strong>film</strong> company is Roland Film Productions.
LOUIS SARNO – CO-WRITER Louis Sarno is an acclaimed ethnomusicologist born in New Jersey in 1954 who now lives in the Dzanga Sangha Dense Forest Reserve in southwestern Central African Republic (CAR). Drawn to the heart of Africa <strong>by</strong> pygmy music he heard on the radio while traveling in Europe, Louis made his first journey to the CAR in the 1980’s with little more than a plane ticket, some recording equipment, insufficient cash and untested notions about pygmy life. His trip was also inspired <strong>by</strong> Colin Turnbull’s classic The Forest People and an encouraging correspondence with the famed anthropologist. Sarno has now lived with the Bayaka pygmies for over twenty-five years as a welcome member of a cooperative community. He has married a Bayaka woman, adopted two children, suffered life threatening diseases and witnessed the struggles and even deaths of many of his African friends. His committed presence has earned their trust to record songs and rituals previously unheard <strong>by</strong> western ears. He calls this music that is older than the pyramids “one of the hidden glories of humanity.” He is convinced that their music’s intricacy and profound emotional content represents one of the world’s most significant cultural traditions. Sarno’s published works include the acclaimed Song from the Forest: My Life Among the Ba- Benjelle Pygmies (1993) and a book and compact disc collection called The Extraordinary Music of the Ba- Benzele Pygmies (1995). His unpublished memoir, Thoughts Before Vanishing from the Face of the Earth, inspired the <strong>film</strong> OKA! and its lead character Larry Whitman. JAMES BRUCE – PRODUCER As the producer of Oka! Bruce had to not only negotiate with the Central African Republic (CAR) government to allow the crew to <strong>film</strong> there – OKA! would be the second feature <strong>film</strong> ever shot in CAR - but he also managed all the logistics of getting foreign crews in, hire locals, get 15 tons of equipment into and out the country, build production infrastructure in the remote forest of the Congo basin, fly in food and supplies, as well as manage the local officials to make sure the government didn’t shut production down which they did three times! James Bruce has worked extensively in both television and <strong>film</strong>. Currently, James is Executive Producing A&E’s pilot Profilers which is a reality documentary version of Criminal Minds. James is completing Shooter based on Walter Dean Myers bestseller which he wrote and directed. This past year,
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A film by Lavinia Currier Based on the memoir by Louis ... - FDb.cz

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