Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: Who produced the documentary Nefarious: Merchant of Souls?
Filming of "Nefarious" was started in 2007, marking Nolot's film debut. The initial plan was to create a short film, but the project was expanded when Exodus Cry realized the scope of the issue they were documenting. Nolot, a leader in Mike Bickle's International House of Prayer, travelled to 19 countries to collect material for the film. These filming locations included countries in the Middle East, Europe, North America, and Asia. Nolot attested to having found it difficult to produce the film due to the subject matter; he stated that "there is not a day that goes by that I am not mindful of the horrific tragedies we uncovered." He further said that he did not make the film for money or for fame but did so in order to rouse people to action against human trafficking, an issue that he feels to be of great importance. Nolot said that the purpose of the film is "to draw people's attention to the issue, but also to inspire them in terms of what they can be doing … to take a stand against this injustice." Steve Willis and Matthew Dickey were the film's cinematographers. Willis, founder of Underpin Photography, also served as photographer while Dickey filled the roles of associate producer and editor, also directing the re-enactment scenes. Actors in these re-enactment scenes included Bill Oberst Jr., Christian Simpson (as Christian J. Simpson), Allison Weissman, Sarah Agor, and Jess Allen. John Samuel Hanson composed the film score for "Nefarious" after having worked on such other projects as "16 Blocks", "Constantine", "The Book of Eli", and "Lost". As of January 2012, Nolot was producing two sequels to "Nefarious".
"Nefarious" was written, directed, produced, and narrated by Benjamin Nolot, founder and president of Exodus Cry. Exodus Cry, which distributed the film, is headquartered in Grandview, Missouri and is an organization that opposes human trafficking by raising awareness, by reintegrating victims back into society, and by prayer. Nolot founded Exodus Cry in 2007 after a woman he did not know gave him , saying that God told her to do so in order that Nolot might found an anti-human-trafficking organization. This was founded at a prayer meeting later that year where attendees prayed for human trafficking victims. The organization claims that this prayer meeting occurred on the day before the announcement of the 2007 international child pornography investigation, which involved approximately 2,400 human-trafficking-related arrests in 77 countries.
ReelScotland reviewed the film, concluding "an emotive film which shows both what can happen when a Government considers money over its own laws and how those at the sharp end remain resilient throughout". Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film three stars out of four, writing that the most fascinating aspect of the documentary is "Trump’s almost joyous rudeness" and that "the underlying message is that if you are rich and powerful enough, you can run roughshod over tradition and private property rights and buy your place at the table." Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Times that the documentary is an "unabashedly hostile portrait" of Trump, depicting him as "an insensitive, lying bully" who tried to pressure the golf course’s neighbors into sell their properties to him, including threatening them with compulsory purchase orders.
Leto described the series as an "unofficial sequel" to "Artifact", a documentary film about the legal dispute between Thirty Seconds to Mars and record label EMI. He explained, "it's what happens when "Artifact" left off. Literally. The last shot of the film is the first shot of the series." The series is directed by Jared Leto under his longtime pseudonym Bartholomew Cubbins. A trailer for the series premiered in November 2014, featuring a British narrator and assorted live scenes, paired with some interviews and some of the band's songs, including "Closer to the Edge".
A film, directed by Terry Gilliam, was planned. As of 2002 Gilliam still hoped to make the film with its already completed script, but by 2006 it seemed to have come to nothing. Funding was slow to appear and Gilliam moved on to other projects. There was a rumour that Johnny Depp was originally cast as Crowley and Robin Williams as Aziraphale. However Gaiman has said on his website, "Well, Robin's worked with Terry Gilliam before as well, of course, most famously in "The Fisher King". But I have no idea about "Good Omens" casting (except for Shadwell. Terry told me who he wanted to play Shadwell. I immediately forgot the man's name, although I can assure you that it wasn't Robin Williams)." According to an interview in May 2006 at "The Guardian" Hay Festival, Gilliam was still hoping to go ahead with the film.
America: Imagine the World Without Her is a 2014 American political documentary film by Dinesh D'Souza based on his book of the same name. It is a follow-up to his film "" (2012). In the film, D'Souza contends that parts of United States history are improperly and negatively highlighted by liberals, which he seeks to counter with positive highlights. Topics addressed include appropriation of Native American and Mexican lands, slavery, and matters relating to foreign policy and capitalism. D'Souza collaborated with John Sullivan and Bruce Schooley to adapt his book of the same name into a screenplay. D'Souza produced the film with Gerald R. Molen and directed it with Sullivan. The film combined historical reenactments with interviews with different political figures.
The pair went on to direct the Paradise Lost Trilogy--"" (1996), "" (2000), and "" (2011), which earned the pair an Academy Award nomination. The trilogy, shot over two decades, focused on the West Memphis Three, a group of teenagers who were wrongfully convicted of the brutal murder of three children. The trilogy raised doubts about the legitimacy of the teenagers' convictions and spurred a movement to release them from prison, where one of the men was awaiting a death sentence. In 2011, the West Memphis Three were released from their respective death and life sentences after filing an Alford Plea with the Federal Court of Arkansas.
Michael Moriarty plays an amoral anthropologist who has been lumbered with his dysfunctional adolescent son (Ricky Addison Reed). He returns to Salem's Lot, the town of his birth, to find that it has been taken over by the undead. A few living people are kept around to provide blood for the vampires and to operate the gas station and shops in the daytime. Knowing of the anthropologist's refusal to moralise about other people's lifestyles (in the opening scene he is seen refusing to interfere in a human sacrifice and concerned only for the quality of the film he is shooting), the vampires employ him to write their story. As the vampires' evil nature becomes clear, the anthropologist is joined by a Nazi hunter (played by Samuel Fuller) who helps him save his son, and at the climax the master vampire is impaled on the American flag instead of the traditional stake. As the trio escapes Salem's Lot, the vampires are left in the sun to burn along with their homes.Filming took place in Vermont.
Group D
The first film made by her is I Live in Behrampada (1993). The documentary made on a Muslim ghetto in the context of communal riots in Mumbai 1992-93 received Filmfare Award for best documentary in 1994. The film turned out to be a serious discursive material for conflict study and the script of it was published in an anthology - Politics of Violence: From Ayodhya to Behrampada, eds. John McGuire, Peter Reeves and Howard Brasted, Sage Publication,1996. Subsequently, she has made several films – documentary, shorts, video spots and non-fiction features. Most of her films are made with the same unit comprising cameraman Avijit Mukul Kishore and editor Shyamal Karmakar. Her 2006 film Seven Islands and A Metro, on the city of Bombay / Mumbai was one of the first documentary films to have been commercially released in the theatres in India. Apart from making her own films she has also produced several documentaries for younger filmmakers. Her role as a pedagogue, mentor, and producer has helped to consolidate a peer group around documentary practices in Mumbai. Her films had received three National Film Awards.
D'Souza released the trailer for "America: Imagine the World Without Her" on , 2014. He later screened the trailer to at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC on , 2014. The filmmakers hired Christian marketing firms to create a sermon, replete with video clips, based on the documentary, and make it available for download. "The Hollywood Reporter" said on , 2014 that over 1,000 preachers had downloaded the sermon and that insiders expected the number to reach 5,000 before the film's release. The filmmakers also emailed 120,000 evangelical churches asking them to promote the film and hired the company Faithit.com to contact 80,000 Christian consumers. In the following July, D'Souza and fellow filmmaker Bruce Schooley traveled to the state of Texas to promote the documentary on radio and television programs owned by Glenn Beck.
Sean S. Cunningham made his directorial debut with the white coater film "The Art of Marriage". His film grossed $100,000 and attracted the company Hallmark Releasing (unaffiliated with Hallmark Cards Inc.). Cunningham made the film "Together" as a "better version" of film. Wes Craven, who had no money at the time, was put on the job of synchronizing dailies for Cunningham's re-shoot. He soon began editing the film with Cunningham and they became good friends. Hallmark Releasing bought the film for $10,000 and it was considered a "hit." Hallmark Releasing wanted them to do another film with a bigger budget and gave them $90,000 to shoot a horror film.
Lionsgate, which handled home entertainment distribution for D'Souza's previous film "", acquired rights to distribute "America: Imagine the World Without Her" in theaters in the United States. Historically, it distributed in theaters two political documentaries, "Fahrenheit 9/11" (2004) and "Religulous" (2008). The UK-based Manifest Film Sales acquired rights to distribute "America" outside the United States with the goal of screening the documentary at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, but the screening did not take place.
With its setting in the Thirty Years' War, it covered a period never previously depicted on film (apart from 1933's "Queen Christina"). In this light, George MacDonald Fraser wrote in 1988, "The plot left me bewildered - in fact the whole bloody business is probably an excellent microcosm of the Thirty Years' War, with no clear picture of what is happening and half the cast ending up dead to no purpose. To that extent, it must be rated a successful film. ... As a drama, "The Last Valley" is not remarkable; as a reminder of what happened in Central Europe, 1618-48, and shaped the future of Germany, it reads an interesting lesson." Fraser says of the stars, "Michael Caine ... gives one of his best performances as the hard-bitten mercenary captain, nicely complemented by Omar Sharif as the personification of reason."
Enter the Void is a 2009 English-language drama art film written and directed by Gaspar Noé and starring Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta, and Cyril Roy. Set in the neon-lit nightclub environments of Tokyo, the story follows Oscar, a young American drug dealer who gets shot by the police, but continues to watch subsequent events during an out-of-body experience. The film is shot from a first-person viewpoint, which often floats above the city streets, and occasionally features Oscar staring over his own shoulder as he recalls moments from his past. Noé labels the film a "psychedelic melodrama".
In February 2015, a low-budget TV adaptation titled "Winter Dragon", based on the prologue to "The Eye of the World", was aired on FXX. It starred Max Ryan as Lews Therin Thelamon and Billy Zane as Ishamael. It aired with no announcements or publicity. Harriet McDougal initially stated she was unaware of the show ahead of time, and that the film rights to "The Wheel of Time" were set to revert to the Bandersnatch Group, her company, a few days later on February 11, 2015. Her comments triggered a lawsuit with Red Eagle, which was ultimately dismissed during settlement talks that July. In an interview with io9 Rick Selvage, CEO of Red Eagle Entertainment stated "it was more of an [issue of] getting it on the air." A spokesman for FXX stated that the channel was paid to air the show, but Selvage hinted that it was indeed produced with a future series in mind. "We think there's huge demand for the television series internationally, and we're looking forward to producing it and getting it out in the marketplace."
Michaels' first documentary was "Vampira: The Movie", which profiled Maila Nurmi, the first horror host. The film featured testimonials by Sid Haig, Julie Strain, Kevin Eastman, Forrest Ackerman, Debbie Rochon, John Zacherle, Lloyd Kaufman, Bill Moseley, Cassandra Peterson, Jami Deadly, Jerry Only and horror historian David J. Skal. The score was written and performed by Ari Lehman, the first Jason Voorhies of Friday The 13th. Premiering in October 2006, "Vampira: The Movie" was released on DVD in September 2007 by Alpha Video, and won a Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award in 2008 for Best Independent Production.
Bold Films is an American independent film production and finance company. Bold was founded in 2004 with the mission of producing talent-driven, studio-quality films, which have worldwide commercial appeal. Bold's first three films were "Slingshot", "Come Early Morning" and "Mini's First Time". In 2006 the company had its first hit, producing and financing the Golden Globe-nominated period piece "Bobby", written and directed by Emilio Estevez. In 2009 Bold produced and released Joe Dante's 3D thriller "The Hole", which Roger Ebert called the best use of 3D ever. In 2010 Bold had its first major studio film "Legion", which was co-financed and released by Screen Gems, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment. In 2011 Bold co-produced and co-financed with OddLot Entertainment the critically acclaimed "Drive" starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, for which director Nicolas Winding Refn won the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival while also receiving accolades from the BAFTA Awards, The Golden Globes and Academy Awards. In 2014 the company garnered worldwide recognition for producing and financing the critically acclaimed films "Nightcrawler" starring Jake Gyllenhaal, and "Whiplash" with Blumhouse Productions, which received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. Other awards nominations for the film include the Spirit Awards, PGA Awards, SAG Awards, and WGA Awards.
On the "WTF with Marc Maron" podcast, on February 24, 2012, she said her next project would be directing her first film, which is about a young woman who abandons religion after surviving a plane crash. In February 2013, she said that the film is called "Paradise" (firstly known as "Lamb of God"). Julianne Hough, Holly Hunter, Octavia Spencer, and Russell Brand are in the cast. Mandate Pictures produced it.
The film was released by Touchstone Home Entertainment on Blu-ray Disc, Blu-ray 3D, DVD, and digital download on December 13, 2011. The release was produced in three different physical packages: a 3-disc combo pack (Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, and DVD with Digital Copy); a 2-disc combo pack (Blu-ray Disc and DVD); and a one-disc DVD. The film was also released digitally in 3D, high definition, and standard definition. The DVD version will include the "Gag Reel" and "Squid Man – Extended and Uncut" bonus features, as well as an uncensored music video for Kid Cudi's song "No One Believes Me". The digital download version will include the same features as the DVD version, plus "Live in Las Vegas: An Interview with Peter Vincent" and "The Official 'How to Make a Funny Vampire Movie' Guide" bonus features. Both the 2-disc and 3-disc combo packs will include five deleted scenes with introductions by director Gillespie, a gag reel, an uncensored music video for "No One Believes Me", "Squid Man – Extended & Uncut", "Peter Vincent: Swim Inside My Mind", "The Official 'How to Make a Funny Vampire Movie' Guide" and "Frightful Facts & Terrifying Trivia" bonus features.
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"Nefarious: Merchant of Souls" documents modern human trafficking, specifically sexual slavery. While there are men and boys who are trafficked around the world, the United States Department of State (DoS) estimates that about 80% of human trafficking victims are female, and the film focuses on them. Information is presented from a Christian worldview—despite the subject matter, there is no profanity or nudity in the film, although there are scenes showing alcohol consumption and women wearing skimpy clothing.
"Nefarious" explores how sex trafficking differs from country to country, and suggests that all the victims are both psychologically and emotionally enslaved. One of the initial assertions in the film is that slavery has not been abolished but is increasing, and that half of this slavery is sexual in nature. "Nefarious" identifies political corruption and difficult socioeconomic situations as elements that prevent sex slaves from escaping exploitation, and suggests that most victims do not survive for more than seven years after initially being trafficked. While the violent acquisition of sex slaves depicted in the first sequence of the film does occur in reality, Jimmy Stewart of "Charisma" wrote that most girls who are sexually trafficked in Europe are recruited through a fraudulent offer of employment and an improved lifestyle overseas, neither of which ultimately materializes in the new country.
"Nefarious" asserts that there is a link between the international sex industry and legal prostitution in the Western world, and that those who create the demand for forced prostitution around the world are of a wide variety of ages and are often considered respectable. The film contrasts the secretiveness and brutality of the sex industry in Eastern Europe with the openness of public prostitution in the Netherlands. "Nefarious" suggests that sex trafficking in Southeast Asia is fuelled largely by the complicity of the victims' parents, with many in Cambodia grooming and then knowingly selling their daughters into prostitution to pay for luxury goods. The film asserts that 10% of the population of Moldova has been sexually trafficked. "Nefarious" contrasts Las Vegas prostitutes with victims of sex trafficking in Europe, depicting the former as drawn into the sex industry by dreams of a glamorous lifestyle, and the latter as made vulnerable by child abandonment and orphanages.
In "News Weekly", Babette Francis called "Nefarious" a "ground-breaking documentary". Tiffany Owens of "World", a Christian magazine, praised the film, describing its storytelling as compelling and vivid. Jamie Rake of "The Phantom Tollbooth" called the film "an engrossing, sometimes appropriately gross, exposé [that] sounds a clarion cry against … modern slavery". Rake praises the re-enactments for being appropriately ominous, and for demonstrating the dehumanization and abuse that characterize sexual trafficking. He suggests that the film is a modern version of "This Is the Life", a Christian television series that dealt with social issues, and that, if Nolot applied for a Motion Picture Association of America film rating, it would be given a PG-13 rating. Dan Preston of "Godculture Magazine" called the film "a hands-on, grimy, honest, explorative piece of journalism". Preston praised Nolot's writing and directing. Jennifer Cheng of the "South China Morning Post" called the film "unnerving" and wrote that it "offers a glimpse into how organized crime, abuse, greed, lust and humiliation intertwine to make human trafficking possible."