THE YES MEN ARE REVOLTING
SYNOPSIS For the last 20 years, notorious activists the Yes Men (Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum) have staged outrageous and hilarious hoaxes to draw international attention to corporate crimes against humanity and the environment. Armed with nothing but thriftstore suits and a lack of shame, these iconoclastic revolutionaries lie their way into business events and government functions to expose the dangers of letting greed run our world. In their third cinematic outing (after The Yes Men and The Yes Men Fix The World), they are now well into their 40s, and their midlife crises are threatening to drive them out of activism forever – even as they prepare to take on the biggest challenge they’ve ever faced, climate change. More than the first two installments, The Yes Men Are Revolting is as much a character study as it is an entertaining depiction of their latest interventions. Revealing the real people behind the ruses, at its heart lies a hopeful message about fighting for change.
KEY CREATIVE PERSONNEL Laura Nix, Director and Producer Laura Nix directed and produced the documentary The Light in Her Eyes, which premiered at IDFA, was broadcast on the series POV on PBS, and toured the world as part of Sundance's Film Forward program. She cowrote the Emmynominated PBS doc California State of Mind: The Legacy of Pat Brown, and her shortform nonfiction work has been shown on HBO, IFC, Planet Green, and the History Channel. She produced festival hit The Yes Men Fix the World, which was sold to HBO and won the audience award at the Berlinale. Previously, she directed the feature documentary Whether You Like It or Not: The Story of Hedwig, for New Line Cinema, which played in over a dozen film festivals in the US and worldwide. As a founding partner of Automat Pictures, Nix directed and produced dozens of nonfiction pieces for inclusion on major studio DVDs, including three documentaries commissioned by Sam Mendes for the movie Jarhead. Nix is also the writer/director of the narrative feature The Politics of Fur, which played in over 70 festivals internationally and won numerous awards, including the Grand Jury Prize at Outfest.
The Yes Men, Directors Armed with nothing but quick wits and thrift store suits, the Yes Men impersonate bigtime corporate criminals to draw attention to their crimes against humanity and the environment. Their outrageous satirical interventions at business events, on the internet, television, and in the streets form the basis of two awardwinning feature documentaries, “The Yes Men” and “The Yes Men Fix the World”, festival favorites in Toronto, Berlin, SXSW and others. Their work has been shown in the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennale, ARS Electronica, and many other art exhibitions. They are the recipients of numerous awards, including Creative Time's Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change, Grierson Documentary Award, Berlinale Panorama Audience Award, the United Nations Association Film Festival Grand Jury Award, Best Documentary Award at HBO Comedy Arts Festival, and the Audience Award at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam. They are the authors of several books and many articles, and lecture internationally on art and social change. They are the founders of a nonprofit, the Yes Lab, and the Action Switchboard, an online platform for generating reallife direct actions in the service of social movements.
Alan Hayling, Executive Producer Alan Hayling is an established documentary film producer and commissioner who has been working in the field since the early 1970s. Alan was Head of Documentaries at BBC Television from 20042006, and spent ten years as a Commissioning Editor in Channel 4’s documentary department from 1991 until 2001. Among the documentaries that Hayling initiated and executive produced himself at the BBC is the multi awardwinning documentary Children of Beslan and the innovative and funny documentary series Mischief. At Channel 4 he worked closely with Michael Moore, commissioning his hit film Bowling for Columbine and his series The Awful Truth. Hayling also executive produced The Yes Men Fix the World.
Alex Cooke is a documentary filmmaker and the cofounder and Chief Executive of Renegade Pictures. Among her films are Closing Guantanamo, about Obama’s failed promise to close Guantanamo within a year of taking office, The Governator, about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first run for Governor of California, and the series Only in America. Prior to directing and founding Renegade, Alex was the programmer of the Sheffield Documentary Festival and a film editor.
Adam McKay, Executive Producer McKay is a writer, director, and producer whose credits include Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, The Other Guys, The Campaign, and most recently, Anchorman: The Legend Continues. His upcoming projects include Undroppable, a documentary that tackles the dropout rate in our schools. McKay is a former head writer of Saturday Night Live and one of the founding members of the Upright Citizens Brigade. Other credits include writing for Michael Moore's show The Awful Truth and cofounding the comedy website Funny or Die with Will Ferrell. McKay also produces HBO's hit comedy series Eastbound and Down, now in its fourth season, through his and Ferrell’s company, Gary Sanchez Productions. In 2009 he took to the stage, directing the Tony nominated Broadway show You're Welcome America: A Final Night with George W. Bush.
Motto Pictures (Julie Goldman and Christopher Clements), CoExecutive Producers Julie Goldman founded Motto Pictures in 2009. She has produced a wide range of awardwinning documentaries, working with a lineup of talented and acclaimed filmmakers. Julie was nominated by the Producers Guild of America for the 2010 Producer of the Year Award. Recent producing credits include Sergio, the Academy Awardwinning The Cove, Valentino The Last Emperor, and Sons of Perdition, which premiered on OWN in June. Other recent credits include: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, God Loves Uganda, A Place at the Table, and Buck. Prior to launching Motto Pictures, Goldman was Senior Vice President of Production and CoProduction at Wellspring Media and Head of Sales and Coproductions at First Run/Icarus Films.
Christopher Clements has served as production/editorial consultant for Motto Pictures on a wide variety of films including: Beware of Mr. Baker directed by Jay Bulger, Our School directed by Mona Nicoara, Sons of Perdition directed by Jennilyn Merten and Tyler Measom, and Gideon's Army, directed by Dawn Porter, which won the US Documentary Editing Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
Rita Dagher, Señorita Films, CoProducer Dagher is an independent producer dedicated to the production of original, unique, and innovative feature films. Films she produced include Miss Julie, directed by Liv Ullmann; My Enemy’s Enemy, by Oscarwinner Kevin Macdonald; Terror’s Advocate, by Barbet Schroeder; and Parada, by Marco Pontecorvo. She coproduced Oliver Stone’s Persona Non Grata, and was Associate Producer of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. She also served as Executive Producer of Chris Morris’s Four Lions, and Shadow Dancer directed by James Marsh. She worked from 2007 to 2012 as Head of Acquisition for the international sales arm of Wild Bunch. She is director of Senorita Films, Paris.
Ole Tornbjerg, Chili Film, CoProducer Since 2000, Tornbjerg has been working as a director and producer of TV documentaries and films about international issues. He has produced several prizewinning documentaries, including Blood in the Mobile, about conflict minerals in cell phones; Arif Hossein, ETV, Dhaka, about child workers in Bangladesh; and Diplomacy: The Responsibility to Protect, about the decision process of the UN Security Council in the Darfur case. Until 2000, Tornbjerg worked as a journalist for TV2 Denmark and DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation). In 2007, he started his own production company, Chili Film.
Pieter van Huystee, Pieter van Huystee Film, CoProducer Pieter van Huystee founded his own production company in 1995 and has produced documentaries, feature films and single plays with wellknown Dutch directors like Johan van der Keuken, Heddy Honigmann and Peter Delpeut. By combining daring with decisiveness, Pieter van Huystee Film has become one of the leading Dutch independent production companies, highly esteemed for the quality and wide range of its projects. In 1999 the distribution department Public Film was added, to release ‘Dutch Docs’ in local cinemas. Many van Huystee documentaries and features are screened at festivals all over the world, receiving many awards.
Christian Beetz, CoProducer Christian Beetz, author and CEO of beetz brothers filmproduction, is one of the leading documentary film producers in Germany. Under his leadership, beetz brothers filmproduction has realised more than 120 highquality documentaries for the international market, which compete regularly at all major international film festivals and have won numerous prestigious awards, including three German Grimme Awards, an Oscar nomination in 2013, and a nomination for the International Emmy® Award in 2014. The focus of beetz brothers’ documentary output is in the fields of culture, history and society. Productions range from featurefilm and television documentaries to docudramas, TVseries and crossmedia formats.
Geraud Brisson, Editor Geraud Brisson collaborated on narrative films such as The Great Debaters by Denzel Washington, Conviction by Tony Goldwyn, and Brothers by Jim Sheridan. His narrative and documentary work has been shown in festivals like Sundance (The Adventures of Power, 2008), Telluride (The Road of the Little Song, 2003) and Toronto International where From the Sky Down, directed by Davis Guggenheim, opened the festival in 2011. He recently edited the adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur, directed by Michael Polish, and edited a piece for the Obama campaign directed by Davis Guggenheim.
Claire Chandler, Editor Chandler’s recent credits include editor of the feature documentary California State of Mind: The Legacy of Pat Brown (dir. Sascha Rice), which aired nationally on PBS; associate producer and associate editor on The Light in Her Eyes (dir. Laura Nix/Julie Meltzer), which broadcast on POV; assistant editor on The Loving Story (dir. Nancy Buirski); and assistant editor on the festival hit The Yes Men Fix the World (dirs. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno).
Søren B. Ebbe, Editor Five times nominated and twice winning the Robert Festival Award for Editing (Danish equivalent of an Oscar), Ebbe’s latest collaboration with Ole Christian Madsen, Superclasico, made the short list for best foreign language film in the 2012 Academy Awards; in addition, he’s just finished series three of the hugely popular The Killing, and the documentary The War Campaign.
Didier Leplae and Joe Wong, music Composers and multiinstrumentalists Didier Leplae and Joe Wong began collaborating in 2004 to create unique compositions for awardwinning films, TV programs, and new media. Experimenting with genres and exploring sonic terrains, they have amassed a body of work that spans several musical styles. Their work has garnered praise from The New York Times, Time, NPR, Chicago SunTimes, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, and Rolling Stone. In addition to his composition work, Didier Leplae has performed with scores of musical projects including The Chain, Competitorr, Bamm Bamm, and The Trusty Knife. Didier has also worked as a filmmaker on independent feature films The Foreigners (Turkey) and I'm Bobby (India). As a percussionist, Joe Wong has toured internationally and recorded with several criticallyacclaimed bands. Recent affiliations include Parts & Labor, Marnie Stern, and Aa. Joe was awarded a scholarship to study Jazz Performance and Music Production at Berklee College of Music and subsequently studied and performed with generations of jazz luminaries.
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TECH SPECS Exhibition format: DCP (unencrypted), 23.98 (24) FPS Runtime: 01:31:02 Aspect ratio: 1.78 (1920x1080) Sound: Digital 5.1