Author: Bennett McClellan

Dr. Bennett McClellan has spent his professional career emerged in various aspects of media and entertainment. He spent the first half-dozen years after leaving university writing, directing and producing theatre. After earning his MBA from Harvard Business School, he went into management consulting, focusing on the entertainment industry. He sidelined that professional to earn his MFA in theater, film and television from UCLA. After graduating, he took on executive roles with Hanna-Barbera Productions, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Nickelodeon’s west coast animation studio. He then returned to consulting as a Managing Director for PricewaterhouseCooper’s entertainment practice in Los Angeles. After finishing his PhD in 2010, he shifted to India to help start up a half dozen university programs, including a filmmaking academy, and then migrated to Vietnam.

Matsuchiyo – Life of A Geisha (Japan)

Writer & Director: Ken Nishikawa Writers & Producers: Ken Nishikawa & Mike Rogers Review Filmmaker and narrator Ken Nishikawa offers us an uncomfortable yet open-hearted inquiry into the life of a woman he has struggled to know. Nishikawa’s subject is his mother, a geisha known as Matsuchiyo. Now 80, Nishikawa’s mom is the oldest practicing […]

[REVIEW] Above The Clouds (UK)

Producer & Director: Leon Chambers Writer: Simon Lord Starring: Naomi Morris, Andrew Murton and Philip Jackson Review Film festivals attract filmmakers, cinema insiders, the cognoscenti. The Raindance Film Festival’s banner proclaims: “Discover. Be Discovered.” Raindance know their audience. It’s filmies. Yet, all week I’ve noticed the punters, people who buy a ticket and who seem […]

[REVIEW] The End Of Wind (China)

Writer & Director: Fog Forest Producer: Shaohui Hangfu Starring: David Dai, Jing Mu, Shuxian Ren Synopsis Forest Fog’s The End of Wind blows coldly on the idea of hope. The film begins with someone resolving to commit suicide. It ends with someone achieving that resolution. Everything that happens must transpire between these monolithic boundary stones, […]

[REVIEW] Ana By Day

Ana de Dia (Ana by Day) Spain Writer & Director: Andrea Jaurrieta Producer: Iván Luis Starring Ingrid Garcia-Jonsson Sat 29th Sep 18:30 Buy Tickets Q&A with Andrea Jaurrieta (Director) and Iván Luis (Producer) Add To Calendar VUE Piccadilly Mon 1st Oct 13:00 Buy Tickets Synopsis Imagine a friend asks you,” What if you called your […]

[REVIEW] The Whistleblower Of My Lai (USA)

Documentary film written & directed by Connie Field Produced by Connie Field & Gregory Scharpen A behind the scenes documentary of the creation of Jonathan Berger’s opera, with Harriet Scott Chessman’s libretto, about US Army helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson who saw the aftermath of the My Lai massacre and interceded to save the handful of […]

Bennett Has Come To Raindance For…

Hi Guys!, as they say in Vietnam. I’m Bennett McClellan. I live in Ho Chi Minh City and teach film and television production at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. The filmmaking scene in South East Asia is booming. It’s driven by young, digitally savvy people keen to tell stories in their own languages. I […]

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