Joel Daniel Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen, collectively known as the Coen brothers, are an American filmmaking duo. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody. Their most acclaimed works include Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007), A Serious Man (2009), True Grit (2010) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013). Many of their films are distinctly American, often examining the culture of the American South and American West in both modern and historical contexts.
Frances Louise McDormand is an American actress and producer. In a career spanning over four decades, she has gained acclaim for her roles in small-budget independent films. McDormand has received numerous accolades, including four Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and one Tony Award, making her one of the few performers to achieve the "Triple Crown of Acting". Additionally, she has received three BAFTAs and two Golden Globe Awards. McDormand's net worth is estimated as $100 million, and her worldwide box office gross exceeds $2.2 billion.
Christmas Eve on Sesame Street is a Sesame Street Christmas special first broadcast on PBS on Sunday, December 3, 1978.
James Francis Ivory is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. For many years, he worked extensively with Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, his domestic as well as professional partner, and with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. All three were principals in Merchant Ivory Productions, whose films have won seven Academy Awards; Ivory himself has been nominated for four Oscars, winning one.
Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird is a 1985 American musical road comedy film directed by Ken Kwapis and written by Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss. Based on the children's television series Sesame Street created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, it was the first theatrical feature-length Sesame Street film. It stars Muppet performers Caroll Spinney, Jim Henson and Frank Oz alongside Sandra Bernhard, John Candy, Chevy Chase, Joe Flaherty, Waylon Jennings, and Dave Thomas with Sesame Street regulars Linda Bove, Emilio Delgado, Loretta Long, Sonia Manzano, Bob McGrath, Roscoe Orman, Alaina Reed, and Kermit Love in supporting roles and the voices of Laraine Newman, Brian Hohlfeld, Cathy Silvers, Eddie Deezen, and Sally Kellerman. It tells the story of Big Bird being assigned to the Dodo Family by a social worker working for the Feathered Friends as he soon runs away from them to get back to Sesame Street as he is searched by the social worker, his friends, and two con artists.
Mark Saltzman is an American script writer who has written films, plays and musicals and for TV. He worked for several years for Sesame Street. He has been given seven Emmy Awards for Best Writing for a Children's Show.
Outfest is an LGBTQ-oriented nonprofit that produces two film festivals, operates a movie streaming platform, and runs educational services for filmmakers in Los Angeles. Outfest is one of the key partners, alongside the Frameline Film Festival, the New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival, and the Inside Out Film and Video Festival, in launching the North American Queer Festival Alliance, an initiative to further publicize and promote LGBT film.
Sridhar Rangayan is an Indian filmmaker who has made films with special focus on queer subjects. His queer films, The Pink Mirror and Yours Emotionally, have been considered groundbreaking because of their realistic and sympathetic portrayal of the largely closeted Indian gay community. His film The Pink Mirror remains banned in India by the Indian Censor Board because of its homosexual content.
Tom Dolby is an American filmmaker, producer, and novelist. Dolby was the writer and co-director of the feature film Last Weekend. He was also the director and co-writer of the film The Artist's Wife. Dolby is the principal and founder of Water's End Productions, a Los Angeles–based production company that has produced several acclaimed films such as Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name, Ira Sachs’ Little Men, Matt Tyrnauer's Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, and Nia DaCosta's Little Woods.
Elmo's Christmas Countdown is a 2007 television Christmas film, featuring the characters from Sesame Street. It was first aired on December 23, 2007, on ABC and starred Ben Stiller.
Ernest & Bertram is a 2002 tragic comedy short film written and directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker and actor Peter Spears. The film spoofs Sesame Street characters Ernie and Bert. The film is based on Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour and depicts Bert and Ernie after they are outed by Variety magazine. Although the film was a success at the Sundance Film Festival and the U.S Comedy Arts Festival, it kept from further distribution when Sesame Workshop served the film's producers with a cease and desist order for copyright violation.
Luca Guadagnino is an Italian film director and producer. His films are characterized by their emotional complexity, sensuality, and sumptuous visuals. He is also known for his frequent collaborations with actors Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, Timothée Chalamet and Michael Stuhlbarg, editor Walter Fasano and screenwriter David Kajganich.
Bert and Ernie are two Muppet characters who appear together in numerous skits on the PBS/HBO children's television show, Sesame Street. Originated by Frank Oz and Jim Henson, the characters are currently performed by puppeteers Eric Jacobson and Peter Linz; Oz performed Bert until 1 January 2006.
Chloé Zhao is a Chinese-born filmmaker. She is known primarily for her work on independent films.
Call Me by Your Name is a 2017 coming-of-age romantic drama film directed by Luca Guadagnino. Its screenplay, by James Ivory, who also co-produced, is based on the 2007 novel of the same title by André Aciman. The film is the final installment in Guadagnino's thematic "Desire" trilogy, after I Am Love (2009), and A Bigger Splash (2015). Set in 1983 in northern Italy, Call Me by Your Name chronicles the romantic relationship between a 17-year-old, Elio Perlman, and Oliver, a 24-year-old graduate-student assistant to Elio's father Samuel, an archaeology professor. The film also stars actresses Amira Casar, Esther Garrel, and Victoire Du Bois.
Film of the Year is one of the main categories of Dorian Awards, given annually by GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics since 2010. For the group's 2021 and 2022 awards, the category was temporarily named Best Film, mirroring the revised timelines of other film honors affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Mystery of Love" is a song written and performed by American singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens and produced by Thomas Bartlett. It was self-released digitally, under license to Madison Gate Records and Sony Classical, on 1 December 2017. Luca Guadagnino, director of the 2017 film Call Me by Your Name, approached the singer to contribute to the film as a narrator, but Stevens declined and agreed to record an original song instead. Stevens was granted full creative control during the songwriting process and received inspiration from the film's script and André Aciman's novel of the same name. An acoustic song, the lyrics describe romance and allude to the relationship between film characters Elio and Oliver. They also make several references to the state of Oregon, birds, and Christianity.
Nomadland is a 2020 American drama film written, produced, edited and directed by Chloé Zhao. Based on the 2017 nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder, it stars Frances McDormand as a widow who leaves her life in Nevada to travel around the United States in her van as a nomad. A number of real-life nomads appear as fictionalized versions of themselves, including Linda May, Swankie, and Bob Wells. David Strathairn also stars in a supporting role.
Jessica Bruder is an American journalist who writes about subcultures and teaches narrative writing at Columbia Journalism School.
Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century is a 2017 nonfiction book by American journalist Jessica Bruder about the phenomenon of older Americans who, following the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009, adopted transient lifestyles traveling around the United States in search of seasonal work (vandwelling).
