Interviews

When Italian film director, painter, and inventor Alessio Della Valle (who was born and raised in Florence, Italy, and studied film in Los Angeles) had the idea of a thriller set in the world of art, he probably didn’t think that stars like Jeremy Piven, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Emile Hirsh and Paz Vega, and an Oscar-winning editor like Zach Staenberg (The Matrix) would immediately come on board. But they did because of the strength and originality of the script, and they are now supporting the US limited release of the film, American Night, a neo-noir action thriller set in the New York City contemporary art world.

In 2000, Halle Berry won her first major award - the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Made for Television - for Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. Berry built on her success and went on to have an amazing career as an actress across all genres.

In his last interview, the legendary director/producer/writer/actor talks to HFPA journalist Elisabeth Sereda about The Last Picture Show, his friend Orson Welles, his foray into journalism, who was a "pain in the neck" to work with and the five icons he wrote about in his upcoming, posthumous book. Check out Golden Globes Around the World Podcast: Peter Bogdanovich.

A pairing made in film heaven: director and cinematographer Spike Lee and Ernest Dickerson, inseparable in almost everything they did as artists in the 80s and 90s, making six movies together, and great friends in real life. Recently the two sat down together in downtown Los Angeles, where they talked for an hour and a half in front of a rapt audience of 400 at the Colburn School of Music.

Moroccan actor Youssef Kerkour has gone from being typecast as a terrorist to acting opposite Adam Driver and Al Pacino in House of Gucci. And it seems there’s more to come, as Kerkour tells us he will once again be working with iconic director Ridley Scott on the Napoleon Bonaparte drama Kitbag, alongside Joaquin Phoenix.

Starting as a refugee and rising all the way to award-winning film star and now into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Zain Al Rafeea has done a lot at 17 years old. With only two acting roles under his belt, Zain has managed to catapult himself and his family into a new life.

“You could summarize Spin Time as a documentary about the poor as you've never seen them before,” says Italian author, stand-up comedian and satirist Sabina Guzzanti, known internationally for her 2005 documentary Viva Zapatero! Her new film, Spin Time, subtitled How Tiring Democracy Is!, had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival last September and will be screened in New York in early December. “The film portrays the world of the invisible poor, who refuse to play the victims here,” says Guzzanti, who is famous in Italy for her parodies and hilarious impressions of Italian politicians (her Berlusconi is a classic).

The HFPA met Oliver Stone in Nursultan, Kazakhstan, and later at the Rome Film Fest in October to talk about his involvement in the new documentary Qazaq: History of the Golden Man, which is now showing at the Asian World Film Festival in Los Angeles. The film, available both as a feature-length version and as a six-hour series, is written, directed and produced by Igor Lopatonok, and Stone figures as the interviewer of Kazakhstan's former President, considered the founder of the country, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the larger-than-life and controversial subject of this intriguing project with the music score composed by Golden Globe nominee Carlo Siliotto.

Velvet Jesus is a collaboration between African American filmmakers Anthony Bawn and Spencer Michael Collins IV, who created the company VIM Media LLC to create content for their community and tell stories that are not often heard outside it. It turned out that it is not an easy task creating gay African American content, and the team set out to make a difference and create a platform for their community to tell their stories too.

The Reykjavik International Film Festival (RIFF) prides itself on being a low-key and unpretentious film festival without VIP treatments and long red carpets. The festival, which lasts 11 days and this year was from September 30 until October 10, is young and hip.