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| Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato |
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| Directors/Producers |
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| With the simple belief that we are living in a World of Wonder, award-winning filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato set up their production company of the same name in the early nineties after meeting at NYU film school. They have made a name for themselves producing and directing compelling documentaries and unscripted series that combine intriguing characters with first-rate storytelling. |
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| Many of their feature documentaries have premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, including Inside Deep Throat, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and Party Monster. Mapplethorpe: Look At The Pictures will be their sixth world premiere at Sundance and third European premiere at the Berlinale. |
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| Fenton and Randy have never shied away from controversial material: Inside Deep Throat told the behind-the-scenes story of the world's most well-known adult film. Becoming Chaz documented Chaz Bono's groundbreaking transgender journey. They re-worked their Club Kid documentary Party Monster into a cult movie of the same name starring Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green. On the small screen, RuPaul's Drag Race has proven to be a worldwide hit with huge social reach. From real estate agents (Million Dollar Listing) to the Queen of Bounce herself (Big Freedia), their passion for telling the often stranger-than-fiction stories of real life touches everything they produce. |
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| They have their finger on the pulse of zeitgeist. The Last Beekeeper, a documentary investigating the mysterious disappearance of the honeybee, won the 2010 Emmy® Award for Outstanding Nature Programming. In September of 2011, The Strange History of Don't Ask, Don't Tell premiered on HBO the very day that the controversial military policy was repealed. Before transsexuality recently became an openly-discussed topic, their 2011 Sundance Festival hit Becoming Chaz garnered three Emmy® nominations and launched Oprah Winfrey’s documentary film club. And prior to that, they created Sex Change Hospital in 2008 for Discovery and Transgeneration in 2005 for the Sundance Channel. Their documentary Esquire’s 80th launched the Esquire Network in September, 2013. |
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| Over the years, Fenton and Randy have directed and produced numerous documentaries about characters deemed overexposed yet under-revealed: Monica in Black and White (HBO) reassessed Monica Lewinsky’s reputation long before it was conceivable, and Heidi Fleiss: The Would-be Madam of Crystal (HBO) revealed the notorious madam falling in love – with a parakeet. As longtime fans of Britney Spears, they revealed the modest and shy person at the heart of a massive showbiz machine in 2013’s I Am Britney Jean (E!). |
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| World of Wonder’s groundbreaking television series RuPaul’s Drag Race is currently both the #1 show and most-watched show in Logo Channel’s history (season eight premieres early 2016). RuPaul’s Drag Race was also the recent winner of the prestigious Television Critics Association Award for Outstanding Reality Television Programming. |
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| Other successful series include the Emmy-nominated Million Dollar Listing (Bravo) following the lives and listings of hot-shot real estate agents with fifteen seasons combined set in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and San Francisco. For four seasons, Big Freedia (Fuse) has been the number one-rated and most-watched original series in the network’s history. |
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| World of Wonder benefits from long-term and evolving relationships with many of its subjects and partners. Fenton and Randy met RuPaul when they were touring with their own band, The Fabulous Pop Tarts. Immediately recognizing Ru as the star they knew he was, they dedicated themselves to helping the rest of the world catch up. As RuPaul's management company, Fenton and Randy secured Ru’s record deal, negotiated an unprecedented MAC Cosmetics deal, as well as directed and produced his breakout award-winning music videos. After producing and directing the documentary Party Monster, featuring James St. James, they hired him to pen Disco Bloodbath. They then wrote, directed and co-produced (with Killer Films) the cult hit Party Monster starring Macaulay Culkin, Seth Green, Marilyn Manson, Dylan McDermott and Chloë Sevigny. |
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| Based in Hollywood, World of Wonder’s presence is worldwide. Their work is distributed in 261 territories on over 163 channels. Out of their UK office, they conceived and produced multiple world-class documentary series including Pornography: The Secret History Of Civilization, Andy Warhol: The Complete Picture (recipient of a BANFF Rockie Award) and the Jon Ronson series Crazy Rulers of the World, an episode which George Clooney’s film The Men Who Stare At Goats was based upon. They also created the breakout-hit series Manhattan Cable, TakeoverTV and The Adam and Joe Show, which won an RTS (Royal Television Society) Award. |
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| Overall, They have produced cutting-edge fiction and non-fiction programming for over 56 networks including HBO, Showtime, VH1, IFC, Discovery, MTV, OWN, TLC, E!, BBC, PBS, and Channel 4 UK. At the same time, Randy and Fenton are screen agnostic believing more than ever, that size doesn’t matter; it’s the dimension of the story that counts. They produced the popular web series #CandidlyNicole starring Nicole Richie (co-produced with AOL and Telepictures) which eventually became a TV series of the same name for VH1. |
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| They have also created a substantial digital footprint with multiple original series on their signature YouTube channel WOWPresents. The channel has over 325,000 subscribers and 130 million views. Championing new upcoming talent also remains a true passion. To support these voices, they have launched an MCN (Multi-Channel Network) comprising 120 YouTube channels with over 215 million cumulative views and over 850,000 subscribers. The popular WOW |
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| Report blog, which can be found at www.worldofwonder.net, receives more than 1.5 million visitors per month and was awarded the Best Counter Culture Blog by LA Weekly. In 2014 Randy and Fenton were honored with the IDA Pioneer Award, celebrating exceptional achievement, leadership, and vision in the nonfiction and documentary community. |
| Katharina Otto-Bernstein |
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| Producer |
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| Katharina Otto-Bernstein is an award-winning documentary producer, director and writer. Her films have been shown in international film festivals around the world, including Sundance, Berlin, Sydney, Melbourne, Jerusalem, Doc-Aviv, Warsaw, Rio, Paris, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Johannesburg, Cologne, Vancouver, Chicago, Hot Springs, Hamptons, Seattle, Silverdocs etc. |
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| Born in Hamburg, Germany, she received both her BA in Political Science and her MFA in Film from Columbia University. In addition to producing MAPPLETHORPE: LOOK AT THE PICTURES, Katharina produced and directed the theatrically released documentary features: BEAUTOPIA (Grand Prize Nominee - Sundance Film Festival, Silver Hugo - Chicago Film Festival) and ABSOLUTE WILSON (Berlinale premiere, Art Film of the Year Award – Art Basel). She wrote Robert Wilson’s biography ABSOLUTE WILSON as a companion book (Prestel Publ.) and was awarded the Columbia University Alumni medal for these works. Katharina was the dramaturge of the Karol Armitage Ballet FABLES ON GLOBAL WARMING (Krannert Center for the Performing Arts) and contributing author on the books NO BETTER FRIEND (Lyons Press) and THE WATERMILL CENTER (Daco Verlag). For television she wrote, directed/ co-directed the films: THE NEED FOR SPEED, COMING HOME, WHEN NIGHT FALLS OVER MOSCOW and THE SECOND GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD starring Mira Sorvino and Malcolm McDowell. |
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| Katharina Otto-Bernstein founded Film Manufacturers Inc. (FMI) in the nineties, in New York, to create an international production company that develops, produces and co-produces innovative fiction and non-fiction entertainment. Since 2002 producer Kathrin Lohmann is running the FMI office in Munich. FMI’s work reflects dynamic storytelling that consistently questions, ignites, inspires and entertains. MAPPLETHORPE: LOOK AT THE PICTURES is Otto-Bernstein’s return to Sundance and the Berlinale. |
| Edward Mapplethorpe |
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| Born and raised in New York, Edward Mapplethorpe began his solo career in 1990 under the pseudonym Edward Maxey and was quickly acclaimed for his luminous nudes, portraits, and still lives that were evocative of his older brother, Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989). However, it was his innovative work beyond the controlled environment of the studio (Undercurrents, 1992-94) that first distinguished him as a unique talent in bridging the gap between photography and abstract painting. |
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| Since that time, his work has progressively incorporated painterly qualities and experimental working practices, seen throughout his distinguished bodies of work that include: Undercurrents (1992-94), Stars and Stripes (1994), Transmographs (2000), Compositions (2002), HAIR Transfer (2004; commissioned by Shiseido la Beauté), TimeLines (2007), TimeZones (2008), and The Variations (2011 - 2014). His work has been widely exhibited throughout Asia, Europe and North and Latin America. |
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| In addition to his creative practice, Mapplethorpe has built a very successful reputation through his commissioned photographs of one-year-old children. A monograph of these portraits titled ONE: Sons & Daughters will be released in spring 2016 by powerHouse Books. The culmination of a twenty-year project, the book features a series of sixty portraits that catch the fleeting, yet universal, moment in life when a child reaches one year of age. Essays by esteemed contemporary authors Adam Gopnik, Susan Olean, Francine Prose, and Andrew Solomon accompany the photographs. Patti Smith contributes a poem while Samantha Boardman, M.D. writes the introduction. Contributions from such diverse luminaries emphasize the widespread appeal such innocent and unguarded beauty has for so many people. |
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| The artist lives and works in New York. |
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