Sergio Mendes is set to perform after the world premiere of “Sergio Mendes: In the Key of Joy” at the Santa Barbara Film Festival on Jan. 18. The Grammy award-winning Brazilian musician will perform three songs and participate in a Q&A at the Lobero Theater with director John Scheinfeld.
“Sergio Mendes: In the Key of Joy” includes interviews with Mendes, Herb Alpert, Carlinhos Brown, Harrison Ford, Lani Hall (lead singer of Brasil ’66), Quincy Jones, John Legend, Gracinha Mendes (Sergio’s wife and lead singer since 1971), Jerry Moss, Pele (soccer legend), Carlos Saldhana (Oscar-nominated filmmaker of Rio) and will.i. am.
Scheinfeld has made documentaries on subjects including John Lennon, Harry Nilsson, John Coltrane and many others.
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OSCARS DIRECTOR RETURNS
Veteran Oscars director Glenn Weiss will return to direct the 92nd Oscars, producers Lynette Howell Taylor and Stephanie Allain announced Tuesday. “We are so lucky that Glenn is back as our director this year. He is deeply creative and collaborative and has a terrific instinct for live television,” said Howell Taylor and Allain. “It is a huge win to us to have Glenn at the helm.”
Weiss won two primetime Emmys for his direction of previous Oscars, and three Emmys for directing 19 Tony Awards shows. He also directed the specials including “Kennedy Center Honors,” “BET Awards,” “Peter Pan Live!” and “Dick Clark’s Primetime New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest.”
The Oscars will air live Feb. 9 on ABC.
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PRODUCTION BANNER LAUNCHES
Producers Mynette Louie, Mollye Asher and Derek Nguyen are partnering to launch the Population, a company focused on production film and television projects by and about women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ and other underrepresented groups.
The new company’s “I Carry You With Me,” directed by Heidi Ewing, will premiere at Sundance. They are also in post-production on Josef Kubota Wladyka’s “Catch the Fair One.”
“Our hope with The Population is to help build a more equitable film and television industry,” Louie said. “While so many companies seem to regard ‘diversity’ as the latest trend to capitalize on, Mollye, Derek, and I have been telling these kinds of stories for our entire careers. As members of underrepresented groups, and coming from working class families as well, we’ve noticed how fortune favors the privileged in our industry. So we decided to gather the collective experience and connections we’ve built to keep enabling stories by or about people from marginalized groups. Our goal is to change the status quo of who gets to make movies, and who gets to ultimately influence society and culture.”
Producer Mary Jane Skalski will serve as senior advisor to the Population. Other projects in development include a feminist terror film based on a harrowing true survival story in Mexico and a true crime series set among the Asian American and working class communities in Detroit.