Pasadena Int’l Film Festival Invites Apple Blossoms to Screen

APRIL 2024: Pasadena Int’l Film Festival invites Apple Blossoms to screen Mon, April 8th, 8:15 PM @ Laemmle NoHo 7. For eight days and nights, the festival showcases more than 130 entrants from 15+ countries including features, shorts, documentaries, music videos, animation and web series. Industry pros and Hollywood heavy-hitters share their knowledge about the entertainment industry during the panel discussions. Filmmakers, celebrities, and the public gather for a festive and exciting week that promotes class, craft, culture, and community.

Apple Blossoms Screens at Annapolis Film Festival

MARCH 2024: Apple Blossoms will make its mid-Atlantic premiere at the Annapolis International Film Festival. The festival showcases more than 70 films over four days, and features panel discussions, post-screening Q&As, coffee talks, and more with filmmakers, directors, and industry experts.

The film will screen twice during the fest as part of a shorts program titled: Growing Up is Hard to Do

Fri, Apr 5th, 4:45 PM @ Maryland Hall BOWEN

Sat, Apr 6th, 2:15 PM @ Maryland Hall BOWEN

The Annapolis Film Society and Film Festival provide curated cinematic arts experiences to ignite, inspire, and entertain. Through independent film, we showcase film makers, global viewpoints and diverse perspectives that spark conversation and understanding to bond and unify our community.

Hispanic Heritage Month Conversation with Moisés Zamora Moderated by Marlee Rodrigues

OCTOBER 2023: LAFS celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month by hosting a conversation with Moisés Zamora, the creator, executive producer and co-showrunner of global-hit Selena: The Series on Netflix. Moises also introduced Videomart, an innovative platform that aims to disrupt Hollywood by betting on diversity and emerging voices through a blockchain-powered business model that benefits the independent filmmaker. The conversation was joined by LAFS alum and filmmaker Alex Ferrufino and was moderated by Marlee Rodrigues.

Photo Courtesy of Cecilia Berry



NoHo Cinefest's Post-Strike Writers' Panel

SEPTEMBER 2023: Cinemanas’ Karlee Rodrigues moderated a post-WGA strike writers’ panel at the North Hollywood Cinefest. Among the topics of conversation were expectations for the industry post-strike as well as paths to the Blacklist, best practices in giving and receiving notes, and writers room debriefs.

Panelists included:

John Zaozirny, Feature film production for Bellevue and the Literary Management Team

Sean Collins-Smith, Story Editor, CHICAGO PD; Staff Writer, FIELD OF DREAMS

Mark A. Altman, showrunner/executive producer, PANDORA; writer/producer, The Librarians (TNT), Agent X (TNT), Castle (ABC), Necessary Roughness (USA)

Gabrielle Stanton, Grey's Anatomy, Ugly Betty, The Flash

Marlee Joins Entrepreneurship in Entertainment Panel

NOVEMBER 14 2022: Cinemanas co-founder Marlee Rodrigues was invited as a guest panelist on “Entrepreneurs in Entertainment” for USC’s Business of Entertainment Association. Topics of discussion included discussion of the guest panelists’ backgrounds and company missions, how they started their ventures, taking on investments, and greatest lessons learned in founding.

When asked about the challenges faced and lessons learned from those challenges, Rodrigues emphasized the importance of a solid team, “Not just a founding team but key partners, collaborators, and even supporters in your personal life that align with not only your goals but your path in getting there.”

Other panelists included Remington Scott, founder of leading Metaverse Studio Hyperreal, and Brandon Bauman, founder the social experience providing ultimate entertainment content sharing and discovery solutions, ZinBin. The panel was moderated by MBA student and co-founder of Thumbo, a live sports audience engagement software.

Apple Blossoms Screens at Juilliard's "Art of the Score"

NOVEMBER 2022: Apple Blossoms, the newest short film by the Rodrigues sisters screened at The Juilliard School’s Paul Recital Hall on Thursday, Nov 10th, 2022 for the culmination of the institution’s “Art of the Score” program, led by Dr. Edward Bilous at the Center for Innovation in the Arts. The program pairs composers with selected short films, recommended by the Gotham (formerly IFP).

Through a rare lullaby titled Apple Blossoms, a son reconciles with his mother who is slowly forgetting him. As her memory grows quiet, the song is revived by Juilliard composer Benjamin Pawlak who arranged the score for the film. Pawlak has played with the renowned New York Philharmonic, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Princeton Symphony Orchestra.

The original music, written by Gustav H. Kline and Marion May, was originally recommended to the directors by Christopher Callen (lead actor playing the mother) who, in a rehearsal, sang the lyrics her late mother had passed along to her. The directors researched the song’s origination and found that Apple Blossoms was in the public domain and could be used in the film. Although no arrangement could be found, the filmmakers and composer took it as a challenge to lift the song off the sheet music and into an instrumental piece, the full version playing over the film’s credits.

Entrepreneurial Support in FoundWell Cohort

MAY 2022 - Cinemanas’ Marlee Rodrigues joined the spring 2022 FoundWell Cohort, a program run through USC that helps entrepreneurs discover their own mindset by learning about neuroscience and high performance and sprinting toward a venture related goal.

FoundWell Fellows participate in a multi-week program that involves weekly meetings, daily habit building, and a supportive social network.

Marlee Rodrigues Joins Shoot4Earth West Coast Jury

MAY 2022 - Cinemanas invited filmmakers to participate in the annual Shoot4Earth 24-Hour Global Marathon. The aim of the marathon is to use film to raise awareness on how to protect and save our environment in accordance with the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. The marathon was open to all ages, anywhere in the world. Winning short films received $5000 USC in cash and non-cash prizes. Select films went on screen at the International Cell Phone Cinema Showcase during the 2022 Cannes Festival and Market.

Marlee Rodrigues served as an international jury member and US west coast regional producer of the festival.


Karlee Interviews Brazilian Women Filmmakers for Another Gaze x Cinelimite

APRIL 2022 - Karlee Rodrigues brought Rio de Janeiro-based filmmakers Eunice Gutman and Maria Luiza Aboim together for an interview to discuss their films and their essential contributions to the documentary form in Brazilian cinema history. The interview belongs to a new programme, “MULHERES: UMA OUTRA HISTÓRIA”, a collaboration between Another Gaze, a feminist film journal with the mission of providing nuanced criticism about women filmmakers, protagonists and spectators and Cinelimite, a non-profit media arts organization dedicated to exhibiting, distributing, and restoring repertory Brazilian Cinema in effort to create opportunities for cultural exchange between the U.S. and Brazil.

Now streaming for free between April 24th-May 24th, this bilingual programme exhibits a total of six radical rare documentaries about work by Brazilian women filmmakers (1978-’94), including new digitisations, essays, and interviews.

Visit: www.another-screen.com/mulheres-uma-outra-historia

“The complicated preservation histories of all these titles reflect a longer history of women’s cinema being overlooked in Brazil both inside and outside the archives. Existing at the margins of canonical lists and rarely exhibited in cinemas or at festivals, the titles in our program have only been lauded more recently for their aesthetic brilliance and revolutionary spirit by feminist Brazilian film scholars, many of whom argue for their reinsertion into a larger discussion surrounding marginalised groups whose voices have not been considered throughout 20th century Brazilian film history.”

Project Selected for Gotham (formerly IFP) Owning It: Program

MARCH 2022 - Saudade, the latest film by the Rodrigues sisters, was selected as one of four narrative features to participate in Gotham’s Owning It: Spring Accountability Pitch cohort. The sophomore feature is a personal story of family, identity, and culture.

Owning It, a program of The Gotham Film & Media Institute, is dedicated to supporting, connecting, and empowering women and non-binary creators who break down boundaries in the entertainment industry. Participants in the program attend project workshops and gain insightful perspectives from mentors during one-on-one sessions.

The Gotham (formerly IFP) is a community of creators, producers and distributors working across film, TV, audio and beyond to advance the future of story. The Gotham Film & Media Institute is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to finding, developing and celebrating the people and projects that shape the future of story. Past Owning It guests include Rebecca Hall (Passing), Alice Wu (The Half of It), and Julie Deply (Two Days in Paris, The Before Trilogy, My Zoe).

Karlee Joins Global Women's Film Heritage Collective

JANUARY 2022 - Karlee was invited to join the Global Women’s Film Heritage Symposium, a collective of international filmmakers, cinema historians, and archivists in effort to make women and their films more visible around the world. This year’s events, running January 10th-14th, were hosted by Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh and supported by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 

As part of a series of lectures under the theme “Power and Politics”, Karlee highlighted Brazilian women filmmakers in cinema history and examined how policies can help propel gender parity in the industry by increasing women’s access to resources and funding.

Keynote speakers included: June Givanni (Pan African Cinema Archive), Iris Elezi (The Albanian Cinema Project), Nina Tedesco (Universidade Salgado de Oliveira) and Ana Camila Esteves (Mostra de Cinemas Africanos/Brazil African Film Festival. Organized by: Carmen Thompson (Indigenomics Institute), Lizelle Bisschoff (University of Glasgow), Ana Grgić (Monash University Malaysia), and Stefanie Van de Peer (Queen Margaret University). For more information: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/global-womens-film-heritage-networking-symposium-tickets-214627234837