First Trailer for Alex Gibney's We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks

Alex Gibney Q&A with THR on We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, the Eagles, and Lance Armstrong Live From Sundance.

The Hollywood Reporter's Google Hangout with Alex Gibney at Sundance to talk WikiLeaks, the Eagles Lance Armstrong and more!

Two Chelsea Directors to Premiere Features at Sundance 2013

Chelsea Directors David Gordon Green and Alex Gibney are both set to premiere new feature films next week at Sundance 2013.

Prince Avalanche

David's Prince Avalanche starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch will premiere out of competition at Sundance on Sunday, January 20th.

We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks

And Alex Gibney's newest feature documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks will follow with an out of competition premiere the following day, Monday, January 21st.

If you're at Sundance this year, we think neither are to be missed. 

For more information on David's Prince Avalanche, click here to head on over to Sundance's film page: http://bit.ly/princeavalanche

And for more info on Alex Gibney's We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, head on over to its Sundance page: http://bit.ly/westealsecrets

SHOOT Magazine features 2 Chelsea Directors in Sundance 2013 Feature

SHOOT Magazine has featured Chelsea Directors David Gordon Green in their feature on Sundance 2013, about filmmakers with ties to the commercial industry!

Check out an excerpt below, and the full article here!

     "...Director David Gordon Green of production house Chelsea--and who helmed this year's Chrysler Super Bowl spot "It's Halftime in America"--finds his Prince Avalanche, which he also scripted, in the Premieres showcase. The film centers on two highway road workers who spend the summer of 1988 away from their city lives. The isolated landscape becomes a place of misadventure as the men find themselves at odds with each other and the women they left behind. Cast: Paul Rudd, Emile Hirsch.

     "Oscar-winning documentarian (Taxi to the Dark Side) Alex Gibney, also repped by Chelsea for spots, has his We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks in the Documentary Premieres section. In 2010, WikiLeaks and its sources used the power of the Internet to usher in what was for some a new era of transparency and for others the beginnings of an information war."

    

Alex Gibney's Harrowing Documentary "Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God" Opens today at New York Film Forum and Santa Monica's Leammle 4-plex

New York, NY, November 16, 2012 - Chelsea's prolific documentarian and commercial filmmaker Alex Gibney's scathing expose of abuse and the Catholic Church opens today, November 16, 2012 at New York's Film Forum, and Santa Monica, California's Laemmle Monica 4-Plex, for a limited two-week engagement. The film, which had its world-premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, has quickly been shortlisted by critics and audiences alike as an apt Oscar contender in the documentary category. Justin Chang (Variety) called it "...a powerful, necessary contribution to a chilling body of reportage that, one senses by film's end, has just begun to take stock of the human costs of a monstrous conspiracy." Anthony Kaufman of Screen Daily calls Mea Maxima Culpa, which translates from Latin as "my most grievous fault," "... powerful and affecting."

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In the House of God - Trailer from Jigsaw Productions on Vimeo.

For more information in New York, visit Film Forum: http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/mea_maxima_culpa#trailer

For more information in Santa Monica, visit Laemmle: http://www.laemmle.com/viewtheatre.php?thid=3

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God , an HBO Documentary Film, will see television distribution on HBO in 2013. The film was written and directed by Alex Gibney, produced by Jigsaw Productions and Wider Film Projects in association with HBO Documentary Films, and edited by Sloane Klevin of Union Editorial. Alex Gibney is represented for commercial work by Chelsea.

Alex Gibney's forthcoming Hockey Doc, "The Last Gladiators" Picked Up by Phase 4 for Theatrical Release

The Hollywood Reporter and other entertainment news outlets report that Chelsea Director Alex Gibney's forthcoming Hockey Documentary The Last Gladiators, about the NHL's Chris "Knuckles" Nilan has been acquired for U.S. and Canadian distribution. 

The following article reprinted from the Hollywood Reporter article "Phase 4 Films Picks Up Alex Gibney's Hockey Documentary 'The Last Gladiators'" by Gregg Kilday. You can read the original article here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/last-gladiators-phase-4-films-372583

Alex Gibney's "Catching Hell" Nominated for Outstanding Sports Documentary at 33rd Annual Sports Emmys

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced on Tuesday the nominations for the 33rd Annual Sports Emmy Awards, to be hosted April 30th, 2012, and Alex Gibney's ESPN Films documentary, Catching Hell has been nominated for Outstanding Sports Documentary!

Check out the official press release, here.

And the trailer for the film below:

Alex Gibney's Commercial Directorial Debut for Gatorade with TBWA\Chiat\Day Featured on Creativity Online

Oscar-Winning Documentarian Alex Gibney's commercial directing debut for Gatorade with TBWA\Chiat\Day is being featured today on Creativity online. The first of the two spots, "Jordan" is highlighted, and clicks through to the second spot in the new campaign, "Lochte."

Please check them out here if you haven't seem them yet:


http://creativity-online.com/work/gatorade-jordan/26513

Alex Gibney's "Catching Hell" Premieres on ESPN

All corners of the internet are atwitter (pun intended) with reactions to Chelsea Director Alex Gibney's "Catching Hell" which premiered on ESPN on Tuesday night.


If you missed what all the buzz is about, you'll have another chance.


Tune in:


-ESPN2 Thursday, Sept. 29 at 11 PM
-ESPN Classic Friday, Sept. 30 at 10 PM
-ESPN Classic Saturday, Oct. 1 at Midnight, 8 PM and 10 PM
-ESPN Classic Sunday, Oct. 2 at Midnight, 8 PM and 10 PM
-ESPN2 Saturday, Oct. 8 at 8 AM
-ESPN2 Saturday, Nov. 12 at 5 AM
-ESPN Sunday, Nov. 13 at 9 PM


Trust us, catch "Catching Hell." The film is a great watch, diehard baseball fan or not.

Chelsea's Alex Gibney interviewed on NPR about his new documentary "Catching Hell", which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, and will be screening at upcoming Silverdocs & Chicago International Film Festivals

In Game 6 of 2003's National League Championship Series, a Chicago Cubs fan reached for glory ... and caught hell.   In his new film , Oscar-winning Director Alex Gibney records the fallout of a fateful flub.  Along with half a dozen other Cubs fans, Steve Bartman stuck his hands out for a fly ball hit by Florida Marlin Luis Castillo just as Cubs outfielder Moises Alou also went after it. But Alou didn't quite make it. Instead, the ball glanced off Bartman's hand and into the crowd.

 

     

          Bartman reaches to catch the ball that will change his life forever. 
 

Gibney tells NPR's Neal Conan that Bartman was immediately singled out after the incident. "The entire stadium focused their ire on him and almost tried to kill him," Gibney says. When he saw just how furious everyone got over someone doing the most innocent thing a fan could do, Gibney says he knew there was a story there.

Superstition plays such a huge role in sports that Bartman's name is now inextricably connected to the Cubs' loss. But Gibney says there's also something darker going on.  "Very often, we look to find scapegoats," he says. "Bartman was a perfect scapegoat."  That day changed Bartman's life forever. 

Click here to listen to the rest of the June 22 NPR interview.

New trailer: Alex Gibney's The Magic Trip

After a well-reviewed premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this past winter, Alex Gibney's documentary The Magic Trip is heading into wider release, and you can now check out the trailer, embedded above.

Along with co-director Alison Ellwood, Alex put together 16mm footage that author Ken Kesey and his Merry Band of Pranksters took on their road trip, famously chronicled by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The film includes rare footage of culture figures from Timothy Leary to The Grateful Dead, much of it never before seen by audiences. The Magic Trip will be available to view on demand in July, and will hit theaters in select cities this August.

Trio of Chelsea directors come to Tribeca Film Festival

Everyone over here at Chelsea is proud to announce that the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, kicking off this week, features exciting contributions from three of our directors, Alex Gibney, Johan Kramer, and David Gordon Green.

Academy Award winner Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) will be screening his new documentary Catching Hell, which follows the infamous foul ball that sealed the Chicago Cubs’ loss in the 2003 National League Championship Series with Alex’s signature incisiveness and eye for complex human emotion. Audiences will have the opportunity to discuss in person with Alex after the April 24 screening, when he’ll be sticking around for a post-screening conversation as part of the Tribeca Talks series. In 2010, Alex scored a hat trick at Tribeca, which featured three of his projects from that year: feature film My Trip to Al Qaeda, "Sumo," a section of the blockbuster ensemble documentary Freakonomics, and ‘the hottest ticket of the festival,' Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer.

In this year’s Narrative Shorts competition, Johan Kramer is screening his latest project, and it’s one that’s close to his heart: Bye Bye Super 8 is a sensitive tribute to the film that has the most beautiful colors in the world, and the medium in which Kramer first honed his filmmaking skills.

On the heels of his latest film premiere with Your Highness, David Gordon Green comes to Tribeca as a member of the jury deciding on awards for the Narrative Feature competition, and as a panelist for the Tribeca Online Film Festival, where he’ll be participating in an online Q&A from April 20^th through May 1.

Click through to the Tribeca site to pick up tickets, find out more about the films, or submit a question for David.

Kevin Macdonald and Alex Gibney screen at Sundance this week

Sundance is always one of our favorite weeks of the year, and this year sees the premieres of some seriously exciting projects from two of Chelsea's own: Alex Gibney's joint directorial project with Allison Ellwood,  The Magic Trip, and Kevin Macdonald's collaboration with YouTube, Life in a Day.

For The Magic Trip, Alex and Allison compiled never before seen footage from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest author (and subject of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) Ken Kesey's trip to the 1964 New York World's Fair with his infamous band of merry pranksters, a psychedelic bus, and a seemingly bottomless supply of LSD. Needless to say the results are captivating -- both as further insight into the mind of a polarizing figure, and as something of a time capsule of the 1960s.

Kevin Macdonald's Life in a Day also centers around around real life footage, though in a completely different way. Sponsored by YouTube, this unprecedented project enlisted users across the globe to capture a moment of their lives on camera, all on one day: July 24, 2010. The word was spread, and the world responded with more than 80,000 submissions; over 5,000 hours of deeply personal, powerful film clips were uploaded from contributors from Australia to Zambia, resulting in Life in a Day, a compilation of the most compelling images honed by Macdonald, executive producer Ridley Scott and his team, and a crew of talented editors. The film’s 2011 Sundance Film Festival premiere will coincide with its world premiere, thanks to a live broadcast from the festival at 5PM PST on Thursday, January 27 on the Life in a Day YouTube channel - check out this clip from the movie below, and get online with us to watch the world premiere!

The Reviews are in for Client 9

We here at Chelsea can stop holding our breath - Alex Gibney's latest documentary Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer hit US theaters today, and the reviews are starting to pour in! Below, a sampling of some of our favorites:

In The New York Times Manohla Dargis writes:

For Mr. Gibney, the juiciest parts of this story weren’t the explicit, sometimes banal details, like Mr. Spitzer’s famous black socks. No, the good stuff, as far as Mr. Gibney’s movie and Mr. Elkind’s book theorize, involves the power brokers who — enraged by Mr. Spitzer’s activism as attorney general, specifically in his hard-charging capacity as the Sheriff of Wall Street — might have had something to do with his downfall.

Variety has this to say:

Gibney is characteristically relentless in his research and interviewing...For all the information here, Gibney is unusual among investigative documentarians in that he never forgets he's making cinema. The shooting of interviews via multiple cameras by d.p. Maryse Alberti, particularly when Gibney is grilling the penitent Spitzer, is effective and striking."

The Washington Post raves that Client 9 is a "gripping portrait of a modern political hit..."

...and, naturally,The Village Voice was a bit more blunt:

The prolific documentarian -- Client 9 is Gibney's fourth film this year -- makes a persuasive case that the former governor may have been brought down not just by his penis, but by his deep-pocketed enemies.

We couldn't be more excited for Alex and Client 9, but don't just take our word for it -- get out there and see it for yourselves!

9:00 PM Premiere on HBO Tonight - Alex Gibney's "My Trip to Al-Qaeda"

As previously mentioned in this very blog, September is Chelsea month on HBO. And today is the first event! Alex's Gibney's My Trip to Al-Qaeda premieres tonight at nine, after debuting at this year's Tribeca Film Festival. Variety gives a pretty great review of the film, which can be read in full here, but here's a key excerpt:

A sobering lecture on the Middle East as well as an interesting exercise in multimedia, "My Trip to al-Qaeda" is director Alex Gibney's documentary version of Lawrence Wright's off-Broadway one-man show, developed while researching his book "The Looming Tower: al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." With his understated style and soothing voice, Wright offers a savvy primer on the roots of Islamic terrorism and the U.S.' misguided response, while the filmed performance stylistically recalls a more restrained variant on Spalding Gray's "Swimming to Cambodia."

Check out the trailer below and tune your dial to HBO tonight!

Alex Gibney in Time Magazine 'Phenomenon Watch'

Well, it might not be a regular feature, but it's the subtitle for the piece on Alex Gibney in the lasted issue of Time magazine, and it's accurate. The piece starts by explaining the difficulties of being a documentary filmmaker, and then continues with:

Then there's the curious case of Alex Gibney. The 56-year-old UCLA film-school grad, who won an Academy Award for 2007's Taxi to the Dark Side, has no fewer than four new features hitting screens this year. The most provocative is an as yet untitled Eliot Spitzer documentary, which charts the former New York governor's meteoric rise and scandalous fall and quickly became the hottest ticket at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Check out the full article here and don't forget to check out Alex's Tribeca roundup in the earlier posts!

The Tribeca Film Festival - Starring Alex Gibney

Maybe that's a stretch, but not by much. As referenced in a previous post, Alex Gibney has three films in the 2010 festival, but now he's getting a lion's share of the press too, mostly surrounding his untitled Eliot Spitzer documentary. Listed below is a round-up of some the more interesting articles about his trio of films:

- The New York Times roundup of the festival, featuring Alex

- The New York Post calling Alex's Spitzer doc the 'hottest ticket of the Festival'

- An interview with Alex in NY Magazine about political sex scandals

- Great interview in Movieline with Alex about the Spitzer vs. Tiger Wood's scandals

- Shoot Magazine article / interview regarding Alex's history with Tribeca

- Article about and clip from the Spitzer doc from New York Times Art's Beat

- A quick mention in Variety about HBO buying the rights to "My Trip to Al-Qaeda"

- A summary article from NBC New York

- And, we must confess, the About.com article who's title we borrowed for this post

Congrats to Alex and everyone at Jigsaw Productions!

Alex Gibney's Hat Trick at the Tribeca Film Festival

The hardest working man in documentary film has scored a hat trick at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, and his latest movie isn't even in it! As mentioned in a previous post, Alex Gibney's latest feature length documentary, Casino Jack and the United States of Money, premiered at Sundance and is getting a wide release in May. And here's the trailer, exclusive to Apple

So instead, Tribeca gets a work-in-progress screening of Gibney's Eliot Spitzer documentary, the full length My Trip to Al-Qaeda, and closing night coup Freakanomics, of which Alex directs a section, along with all-star filmmakers Morgan Spurlock, LOKI, and Eugene Jarecki. Click the links for summaries, schedules, and if you're able to score one, a ticket. It's a exciting line up and the Chelsea NY team will be at the Festival in full force. See you there!

Alex Gibney - Sundance 2010 Roundup

Alex Gibney had, not surprisingly, one heck of a Sundance experience. The world premiere of "CASINO JACK and The United States of Money" was a major event, and the film marked Gibney's return to his core subject, the intersection of money, power, and politics. The Sundance catalog summarizes the film thusly:

This portrait of Washington super lobbyist Jack Abramoff—from his early years as a gung-ho member of the GOP political machine to his final reckoning as a disgraced, imprisoned pariah—confirms the adage that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. A tale of international intrigue with Indian casinos, Russian spies, Chinese sweatshops, and a mob-style killing in Miami, this is the story of the way money corrupts our political process.

Check out Alex's own take on the whole experience here, on his blog for The Atlantic, and the Cinematical review here. Magnolia is aiming for a wide release of the film in spring of 2010.

Alex Gibney's "Casino Jack" Set to Premiere at Sundance!

More exciting Alex Gibney news! Then again, his work is always exciting. His just-completed documentary CASINO JACK & The United States of Money is an Official Selection of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival! The film joins 15 others in the US Documentary Competition, whose subjects range from the state of the US public school system to Joan Rivers. The complete list is here. The Sundance catalogue briefly describes Gibney's film as, "A probing investigation into the lies, greed and corruption surrounding D.C. super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his cronies." Congratulations to Alex and everyone at Jigsaw!