Quvenzhané's Best Year Ever

When young Quvenzhané Wallis was cast as the lead role of Hushpuppy by an unknown filmmaker in Lousiana, her mother, Qulyndreia, had few expectations beyond it being a life experience for her daughter.  She tells USA Today:

"We were under the impression that they would show the movie and after Sundance that would be it...we had no idea in a million years that we would be where we are today."

From Utah to the south of France and now, just maybe, a place amongst the Oscar nominated elite, Quvenzhané Wallis has had a pretty memorable 2012.

Check out this USA Today slide show of Quvenzhané's best year ever.

Behind the Cinematography of Beasts of the Southern Wild

Our friends at The Creators Project sat down with Cinematographer Ben Richardson to discuss his approach to shooting Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Early on, Richardson and Director Benh Zeitlin agreed that the camera should be both "interested and reactive", giving the cinematographer freedom to capture anything that caught his eye or rather, anything he thought would catch Hushpuppy's eye.

BR: "When I met her (Quvenzhané Wallis), there was this energy from her and I really realized my responsibility was not to try to impose something on this but just to be receptive to what was being put out by her and by the bayou...I tried to be Hushpuppy's sense if not literally her eyes."

Learn more from behind the camera at the video below including what Ben's most favorite and challenging scene to was.

Hushpuppy in Denmark

It's our first release of 2013.

Beasts of the Southern Wild opens in Denmark on Thursday, June 3rd as Hushpuppy. Check out the local listings here.

If you have friends and family in Denmark, please encourage them to catch the film in theaters!

Happy New Year from Benh Zeitlin

A toast to the New Year.

To Mexico, to Brazil, to Australia, to France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Bosnia, Abu Dhabi, Spain, Ukraine, England, Australia, Sweden, and to many cities across the USA, here's to the spectacular and endlessly bizarre journey of ushering Beasts of the Southern Wild into the world.

Let’s extend a glass to everyone who stormed lobbies around the world and demanded Q and As, snuck me into an ancient relic, chanted with me at a football, futbol, or footy match, showed me new films, new food, new music, new art, danced with Quvenzhané, danced with sheiks, jumped naked into bodies of water on several different continents, drank anything with an animal in the bottle, carried me home or onto an airplane. To quote A.O. Scott speaking about our comrades the Ross Brothers' new film Tchopitoulas (in theaters now), "the pursuit of fun can be a profound and transformative experience."  And it has been.

Let’s all have a cup of Auld Lang Syne.  Looking forward to a new year of channeling all this fun into the work of creating a new film for this incredible, and now international family that Beasts has created.

In 2013 we are hoping to get started on not just films, but also to begin the work of transforming Court 13 into a multi-disciplinary Louisiana Arts Organization. Our kick-off for the new era will be a museum exhibit at the CAC in New Orleans on March 8th, where we'll be showing our short films as well as paintings, photographs, theater, music, sculpture, and interviews that inspired them and were created through them. Stay tuned for updates.

Also, if you are in the States, please track down our blu-ray that has a lot of the story behind how the film was created, beautifully rendered. If you’re somewhere else in the world, we may still be coming to a theater near you. And the soundtrack is out on vinyl and sounds pretty as all outdoors!

Cheers, Cherio, Topa, Salut, Prost, Budmo, Skol, Na Zdavje, L' Chaim.

Lets do this again and forever.

Love,

Benh

Director of Beasts of the Southern Wild

(Illustration by Jess X Chen)

Best of 2012!

Whether you're a film critic or a fan, we're truly humbled to be included on the list of so many of your 'Best of 2012' lists. Here's a round up of some of them:

The Boston Globe’s Top movies of 2012 by Ty Burr - #1

Rolling Stone’s best movies of 2012 by Peter Travers - #3

Roger Ebert’s top films of 2012 by Roger Ebert - #8

NY Times 25 best films of 2012 by A. O. Scott - #3

Time Magazine’s 10 best films of 2012 by Richard Corliss - #2

Paste Magazine's Best Films of 2012 - #5

The Guardian’s 10 best films of 2012 by Henry Barnes - #8

Empire Online’s Films of the Year (2012) by Dan Jolin - #5

Huffington Post’s Movies of the Year (2012) by Christy Lemire - #2

AFI Top 50 of 2012 by FilmComment - #14