Welcome back to the Cause Cinema Spotlight.
This week, we have quite a diverse slate to present. More wonderful music, an entertaining period series, and an animation masterpiece. Life and death surgeries. Life and death fantasies, and the healing power of creative work.
We’ll start there with…
American Symphony
It’s 2022 and musician Jon Batiste is at the peak of his music career while also embarking on his most ambitious challenge - composing an original symphony. In the midst of this meteoric rise, Batiste’s wife - best-selling author Suleika Jaouad - learns that her long-dormant cancer has returned. American Symphony is an intimate portrait of two artists and the healing power of love and creativity.
See American Symphony on Netflix
SIE Society and Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, are co-hosting the inaugural Impact + Profit Conference: Entertainment to Change The World which will bring together leaders from the entertainment, for-profit and not-for-profit fields who are passionate about leveraging the power of entertainment to create positive social change. At the Impact + Profit Conference, learn how you can implement a “double bottom line” on your projects, meet producers and storytellers who specialize in impact and build powerful relationships that will take your ventures to another level of effectiveness, profitability and social benefit. The conference is taking place on December 7-8 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.
What: Impact + Profit Conference: Entertainment to Change The World
When: December 7-8, 2023
Where: Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles CA
I will be moderating a panel there on Friday! Join us. Tickets are on sale now at www.conference.siesociety.org. Cause Cinema subscribers get 20% off! Code is CauseCinema.
The Artful Dodger
Set in 1850s Australia, in the lively colony of Port Victory, Jack Dawkins is The Artful Dodger, whose fast, pickpocketing fingers have turned into the skilled hands of a surgeon. Dodger’s past returns to haunt him with the arrival of Fagin, luring him back into a world of crime. A greater threat – to Dodger’s heart – is Lady Belle, the Governor’s daughter, determined to become the colony’s first female surgeon. From heists to life-and-death surgeries, to the harsh realities of the criminal world mingling with the middle ground and gentry. This is a tale of reinvention, betrayal, redemption, and love with a twist.
See The Artful Dodger on Hulu.
The Boy and the Heron
Hayao Miyazaki's first feature film in 10 years, The Boy and the Heron is a hand-drawn, original story written and directed by the Academy Award®-winning director. A young boy named Mahito yearning for his mother ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead. There, death comes to an end, and life finds a new beginning. A semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship
A tremendous Voice Cast delivers here, which includes:
CHRISTIAN BALE
DAVE BAUTISTA
GEMMA CHAN
WILLEM DAFOE
KAREN FUKUHARA
MARK HAMILL
ROBERT PATTINSON
FLORENCE PUGH
The Boy and the Heron was just released in limited theaters and will expand next week. Worth seeing this on the big screen.
That’s a wrap for the Cause Cinema Spotlight. Have a great weekend
Until next time, you take care.
American Symphony, Artful Dodger and The Boy and the Heron