Riki McManus: Rated, Purple Rain

Episode #43 - Riki McManus began with her own talk show on KQRS Radio in Minneapolis while still in high school. She went on to the commercial industry in Minneapolis as On Camera and Voice Over Talent. McManus continued as an agent and then became the Director of Plaza Three Model and Talent Agency. She opened the first casting company in Minnesota, where Purple Rain was the first feature she casted. Since then, she has cast approximately 20 feature films. She won a Clio Award for a self-promotion piece she did with The Fallon Agency in Minneapolis for her company.

Our screening took place at the Minnesota Discovery Center the largest museum the largest museum complex in Minnesota outside the Twin Cities.

Boxed lunch given to each audience member for screening of Rated.

For her short, Riki brought Rated Directed by John Fortson with his directorial debut that won 14 Best Short FIlm Awards at Festivals. We have to say our audience would have given it award as well. The subject matter of the film is so relevant in our technilogical world, it’s a short about social media commenting how kind we are in our society. We had The Rustic Pig pack a school lunch for each of our audience members to enjoy during the screening.

The feature Riki brought to screen was Purple Rain, which was not only Prince’s debut feature, but also the first feature Riki worked on as well. She tells stories of when she met Prince, the difficulties in casting the film, and experiencing one of Prince’s famous free concerts. So check this out and don’t forget to drink some champagne and celebrate Prince as we did on this very memorable night at the Minnesota Discovery Center.

Riki McManus

Credits:

Production Company - Fourwind Films

Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Production & Event Space - Minnesota Discovery Center

Food - The Rustic Pig

Post-Production - Quatre-Vents

Editor - Billie Jo Laitinen

Sound Mixer - Hans Bilger

Production Assistant - Elizabeth Chatelain

The theme song of Season 7 is New Tires by Silent Partner.

Justin Joseph Hall: Marcellus Hall an Artist in New York City, Fog of War

Episode #42 - Justin Joseph Hall is an award-winning, multilingual multimedia director and founder of Fourwind Films and Quatre-Vents. His work has been acquired by major television networks such as HBO and he’s worked as a lead creative on projects that received awards at The Emmys, TriBeCa Film Festival, Brooklyn Film Festival, and more.

Justin Joseph Hall, photo by Laura Davi

Our screening resumed back at Fourwind Films’ headquarters.

For his short, Justin brought his short series, Marcellus Hall an Artist in New York City. The five episode season has won six awards and been nominated for many more around the world. The documentary is of New Yorker Illustrator Marcellus Hall who also wrote the song Life Is Still Sweet that inspired Float On performed by Modest Mouse.

We screened the entire series back to back and served white and yellow cheese with steak in conjunction with the series.

The feature Justin chose inspired his series with a one-on-one interview that endures the entire documentary. It was Errol Morris’ Oscar winning Fog of War where Robert McNamara goes through thought processes of military decisions during major wars of the United States of America. We served a juicy homemade Vietnamese Beef And Lettuce Curry during the screening.

To learn more about Justin Joseph Hall, sign up for Fourwind Films newsletter.

Credits:

Host - Laura Davi

Production & Event Space - Fourwind Films

Post-Production - Quatre-Vents

Editor - Billie Jo Laitinen

Sound Mixer - Hans Bilger

The theme song of Season 7 is New Tires by Silent Partner.

Shirley Venard: The Railroad Lady, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter

Episode #36 - Shirley Venard is an incredible Minneapolis-based actress who uses her life experiences to embody a character. She’s kind, thoughtful, and a teacher. She loves to tell stories which is why we love her.

Shirley brought Oscar-winning short movie The Railroad Lady (La Femme et la TGV). The first tale of a lonely woman in this pairing. Shirley looked at the great actresses of the 1900’s to find her short and her and Justin talk of Jane’s fake orgasm that made her famous.

The feature Shirley chose is the Zellner Brother’s Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter. The Japanese, Texas made movie that was largely shot in Minnesota. It was a Sundance Film Festival favorite, making Minnesota & Japan look beautiful on the silver screen.

See Shirley Venard’s work in our short movie Prologue. In the forecast to look forward to please check out the award-winning series Marcellus Hall an Artist in New York City which is playing around the world in 2022.

Shirley Venard at the Question & Answer with host Justin Joseph Hall

Credits:

Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Editor - Billie Joe Laitenin

Sound Mixer - Brian Trahan

Sound Mixing Assistant - Hans Bilger

Lead Marketing Agent - Isabel Restrepo

Event Space - The Woman’s Club in Minneapolis

Photographers - Dakota & Dorie Hall

The theme song of Season 6 is Getting It Done by Kevin MacLeod.

Justin Joseph Hall: Halfway Home: A Father's Story, High on Crack Street: The Lost Lives of Lowell

Episode #34 - So many colons in this title! Justin Joseph Hall is an Emmy winning Editor of vérité documentary movies. He love sifting through mounts of footage to carve out the most interesting aspects of what he discovers in a short amount of time. Today he honors Downtown Community Television where he learned to cut their style of vérité footage by showing his favorite movies they’ve made.

For his short Justin brought an off-shoot of the Frontline episode Life on Parole. The short is called Halfway Home: A Father’s Story. It’s a movie that follows a father who was released from prison on parole for an entire year to see what life is like after prison. It’s an example of people with forgotten paths that are ignored by society with trials and tribulations that are often ignored by society. Justin speaks of the challenges of editing the movie and the challenges the main character faces in a complicated social justice system. The food served for the short was an apple and cake.

The feature Justin selected is an often forgotten movie he considers near perfect High on Crack Street: The Lost Lives of Lowell. The documentary that inspired the movie The Fighter was directed by Maryann DeLeo, Richard Farrell, and Jon Alpert. It covers the use of crack cocaine and the spiral it causes in one’s lives and the pull of addiction to the powerful drug. They served donuts, popcorn and domestic beer for this feature.

Learn more about Justin Joseph Hall and his work sign up for Fourwind Films’ newsletter. In the forecast to look forward to please check out host Justin Joseph Hall’s newest movie coming out a comedy special by Nimesh Patel called It’s Dark & Patel Is Hot.

Credits for podcast:

Production Company - Fourwind Films

Appointed Contributor - Justin Joseph Hall

Host - Laura Davi

Sound Mixer & Additional Music - Brian Trahan

The theme song of Season 5 is This Monster by Sun Nectar

Christian Felix: Book Club, Blue Collar

Episode #22 - Christian Felix is an actor from Chicago now based in New York City. He now regularly does a specific kind of acting in diversity training, which is one of the coolest jobs you’ve never heard of previously. No matter what you say about Christian, he is definitely a professional storyteller. On top of him expressively recounting amazing adventures , he’s a spectacular listener. This is what makes him successful throughout his years and his willingness to be professional in all setting yet still have fun. The exact person you want on any filmset.

Christian’s theme for the episode is how film sets can be fun and funny or incredibly contentious and still create great works of art. The short film Book Club by VARIETY SHAC Christian brought is a film where he was a background actor with hilarious comedians (Chelsea Peretti and Fred Armisen to name a couple) where his main job was not to laugh. He talks about other television sets such as the show Blacklist that were more stressful and lead us directly into his feature choice Blue Collar.

Blue Collar had three lead actors who were in a tif during the time of shooting. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto were all told they were the lead and drugs and feuds lead to a rough set life as Christian explains in descriptive detail. The story centers around worker’s unions and the fight of the worker against the larger system is a story that continues to be retold and relived throughout the test of time.

If you want to hear more of Christian, please check out our podcast We Don’t Even Know where he co-hosts with Shonali Bhowmik.

IMG_6028 Faas 022 - Christian Felix.JPG

Credits for podcast:

Produced by Fourwind Films

Brian Trahan - Sound Mixer, extra music

Theme song of Season 4 is Loopster by Kevin MacLeod.

Justin Joseph Hall: Wasp, Rock & a Hard Place

Episode #17 - Justin Joseph Hall our owner from Minnesota has been working hard in post-production at DCTV this year. For this episode that was recorded on his birthday he decided to share how vérité documentaries can be made and aspects of using documentary style camera work can be used in narrative filmmaking.

Justin started with Andrea Arnold’s famous short film Wasp. It is entirely shot in handheld form with little or no music. It follows a family in real time evoking well-known vérité cinema techniques brought forth to documentary filmmaking by folks like the Maysles brothers in the 1960’s and beyond. It is a short intense drama about family responsibilities colliding with personal freedoms.

The feature Justin brought forth was Downtown Community Television’s Rock and a Hard Place that they made for HBO Documentaries in conjunction with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. The film is a vérité documentary by the legendary modern vérité directors Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill and was the first documentary Justin Joseph Hall had worked on with DCTV. He began as an assistant editor and many of the montages in the film for editor David Meneses.

To learn more about Justin’s work in conjunction with DCTV, please check out FRONTLINE: Life on Parole and the new series Axios on HBO.

Episode hosted by Daria Huxley.

Justin Joseph Hall - Assistant Editor

Justin Joseph Hall - Assistant Editor

Host - Daria Huxley

Sound Mix & Additional Music - Brian Trahan

Theme song of Season 4 is Johnny's Tune In Waltz by Salitros’ Ridin’ Rainbow.

Ace Allgood: Chromium Hook, Network

Episode #16 - Ace Allgood is a producer based in Minnesota who is always down to give advice to up-and-coming filmmakers. He actually advised Fourwind Films' owner Justin Hall to move to NYC!  We went all the way to the Land of 10,000 Lakes to record our first episode outside of Brooklyn, NY, and to learn more about Ace's multi-decade career.

Ace brought The Chromium Hook, a film he produced that “breaks all the rules of short films.” He shares how the film was able to cast a very famous actress, why Minnesota is an amazing place to make film, and what he considers the elements of successful collaboration.

The feature film is the classic 1976 film, Network, which features Faye Dunaway. It won best screenplay in 1976, and Ace believes that it speaks to social issues that are also relevant today.

To learn more about Ace’s work, check out his former production company Channel Z here. You can also visit Channel Z's social media pages: Facebook | Twitter 

Episode hosted by Justin Joseph Hall.

Ace Allgood - Producer

Ace Allgood - Producer

Credits:

Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Sound - Brian Trahan
Location - Dakota Hall’s apartment

Bruce Lithimane: Échappé, Postman Blues

Episode #8 - Creative director and cinematographer from Iowa and a film buff, Bruce Lithimane presents at Fourwind headquarters. Échappé was his choice for the short.  It stars Olesya Senchenko and was directed by Allison Mattox.  Bruce was Second Assistant Camera and Steadicam Operator for the short which is a visually incredible Russian ballet story.  Bruce takes us through the struggle with a camera rig and dance with ballerinas.  Next he took us through the Japanese mixed genre feature film, Postman Blues.  It is a funny and sometimes disturbing flick that Bruce wants to rewrite into a modern Brooklyn based adaptation.

Follow Bruce's vision through his lens on instagram.  Also shout out to VidMob who let us borrow Bruce from his normal duties in the office as lead talent acquisition.

Credits:

Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Location & Production Company - Fourwind Films

Bruce Lithimane - Camera Operator/Cinematographer, photo by Daria Huxley

Bruce Lithimane - Camera Operator/Cinematographer, photo by Daria Huxley