Beasts in Dallas

"The funniest thing was all of us wearing nice clothes on the French Riviera, cause thinking back three years, you know, we were getting ripped up by mosquitos in our wife-beaters and shorts. So [where we are now] is as far as you can imagine from where we were when we were making the film.  But we never really had time to think about it, we finished the film two days before Sundance and everything has been moving at lightning speed.  Everyday you just wake up and something crazier is happening." -- Benh Zeitlin

Dwight, Nazie and Benh answered questions at the Angelika Film Center in Dallas, TX.

Benh Zeitlin's Egg

Benh Zeitlin's first FIRST film is a 9 minute stop-motion animation adaptation of Herman Melville's Moby Dick. The film, another Court 13 production, premiered at the 2005 Slamdance Film Festival.

Local Beasts

As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child and as such, it took a whole community of talented people to bring Beasts of the Southern Wild into this world. And as our little film grows bigger and shines brighter, the people who helped make it and the community that Beasts was born from are seizing the moment and doing more with their exceptional gifts. We wanted to shout out members of the Beasts community, friends, neighbors, and like-minded individuals who are up to new things and doin' us proud.

Quvenzhané Wallis has already locked in her next role in Steve McQueen's 12 Years and a Slave. The story centers around a man living in New York during the mid-1800s who is kidnapped and sold into slavery in the deep south.  Even better, Dwight Henry also plays a role in the film, reuniting our Hushpuppy and Wink. It's slated for release in 2013.

Can't Stop the Water is a documentary being made by our friend Rebecca Ferris at Cottage Films. It's about Isle De Jean Charles, a real place in Terrebone Parish, Louisiana that served as our topographic inspiration for the Bathtub.

Tchoupitoulas is a grantee of Cinereach (Beasts is a Cinereach production), also was produced by Court 13's Michael Gottwald, Dan Janvey, and Josh Penn! It was shot in New Orleans, taking place over one dreamy evening in the French Quarter.

Meanwhile, Dwight Henry is making things happen all over the map. Aside from his part in 12 Years and a Slave, the Hollywood Reporter writes that Dwight's expanding his Buttermilk Drop Bakery to a second outpost on Malcolm X Blvd in Harlem. He's also announced plans to join forces with Wendell Pierce to open Sterling Farms, a chain of markets in New Orleans food deserts, selling local produce and catering to the needs of low-income shoppers.  Go Dwight!

Benh Zeitlin on The Treatment

E: One of the things that fascinates me about all these things that you've worked on is this sense of exploration, of going out and seeking things out out of curiosity, and I wonder if that's always been a part of your life -- if you've always been this guy who will go out and dig into tunnels or go into forrests and look for things...

B: Definitely, it took me a long time to decide that film was the art form that I wanted to pursue over music and writing and other types of things and a big part of the reason why was seeing Kusturica's films, seeing Underground and Black Cat White Cat, those films have this sense of a life that exists not just on screen but outside the screen that I wanted to figure out how to create for myself. Being a filmmaker opens doors in this incredibly beautiful way. When you travel, you know, when you go down to the bottom of the road in Terrebone Parish... Everyone knows when you go down the road with a New York license plate, they know you're there as soon as you drive down the road. There's a territoriality and resistance to outsiders coming in. But I think the beautiful thing about being a filmmaker is that everybody loves movies and you get to go down to the docks and say I'm making a movie about the end of the world and this little girl and it opens doors and you get invited into homes and you get invited to dinner in a way that's pretty extraordinary. Making these types of films where you collaborate with the community has allowed us to grow this strange family of people that come from very far away and get welcomed into these very remote cultures and that sort of exploration is something that I would  be doing whether or not i was making films, certainly.

Benh Zeitlin geeked out with Elvis Mitchell about Les Blank, Mad Max, Braveheart, and junk sculptures on KCRW's the Treatment with Elvis Mitchell.

The Music of Beasts of the Southern Wild - Rolling Stone Magazine

"[Benh and Dan] have always worked together in that capacity, but Benh's made film his life, whereas Dan is a music producer by trade," says Gottwald. "But I think that Benh, having musical experience, when they come together they create something that is the product of both of them." The director "has a very good ear for storytelling in film, like the musical storytelling aspect," says Romer. "For a good two weeks, we were sitting together working 20 hours a day on this score, and it was like nine a.m. to five a.m. every day working. Just the level of artistry that he was outputting just made me want to work that much."

Explains Zeitlin, "We've just known each other for so long. I sort of understand his tendencies and he understands mine. Like everything else in the film, it turns out that what we needed was actually our family."

Read more at Rollingstone.com