Support our efforts, sign up to a full membership!
(Start for free)
Register or login with just your e-mail address

Award-Winning Filmmaker Rolla Selbak Premieres Choke At Outfest 2018

Hot Songs Around The World

Water
Tyla
306 entries in 20 charts
Stick Season
Noah Kahan
313 entries in 19 charts
Houdini
Dua Lipa
285 entries in 26 charts
Strangers
Kenya Grace
442 entries in 24 charts
Lovin On Me
Jack Harlow
293 entries in 22 charts
Popular
Weeknd, Playboi Carti & Madonna
266 entries in 18 charts
Lose Control
Teddy Swims
316 entries in 25 charts
Beautiful Things
Benson Boone
159 entries in 24 charts
Si No Estas
Inigo Quintero
283 entries in 17 charts
Greedy
Tate McRae
621 entries in 28 charts
Unwritten
Natasha Bedingfield
291 entries in 22 charts
Anti-Hero
Taylor Swift
615 entries in 23 charts
Cruel Summer
Taylor Swift
572 entries in 20 charts
Snooze
SZA
223 entries in 13 charts
Award-Winning Filmmaker Rolla Selbak Premieres Choke At Outfest 2018
New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Award-winning out filmmaker Rolla Selbak is world premiering her new short film, CHOKE, at the upcoming 2018 Los Angeles Outfest Film Festival - the world's leading LGBT film festival presented by HBO.

CHOKE will screen as part of the "Emerging Voices" short program held on Saturday, July 21 at 8:00pm at the Harmony Gold Theater on Sunset Blvd.
CHOKE tells the story of a successful MMA champion who hides her refugee identity from her small American town, and the world. Sara and her family are Muslim refugees who've escaped the vicious war in Syria and flee to the Unites States, where she fights for a new life in the brutal sport of mix martial arts.

It stars Jessica Damouni (Salam), Allison King (Baby Driver) and Victor Davila aka "master VIC" (MMA fighter & commentator for the UFC)

Selbak, a Sundance 2017 filmmaker, tells the experience of what it feels like to immigrate from your home to a new place you're trying to fit into, especially in today's climate.
"It's both a challenge and an honor to depict an authentic refugee experience truthfully and with creative empathy. Being an immigrant myself and being part of a Palestinian family, I feel that my personal experience lends itself to this intent in a powerful way," says the filmmaker.

The central themes of identity, racism, homosexuality and fear are heightened by Sara's struggle between modesty and boldness, aggression and repression, and oscillation between pride of who she is, and shame of where she came from.

The words "Muslim" and "immigrant" are so charged with electrifying heaviness in today's environment. Just when we think the anti-immigrant sentiment has reached fever pitch in this country, the spikes of vicious rhetoric push the stakes higher.

Selbak's ultimate goal was to tell a different kind of immigrant story, one that offers a counter-illustration to the depictions of brown women on the screen as the devout wife, or the unsuspecting terrorist, or depicting refugees as being weak and powerless instead of strong and resilient.

The MMA backdrop also provides for a really powerful element of symbolism: fighting for your life, fighting for who you are, fighting for identity. It also symbolizes overcoming adversity as Salam ironically excels in a heavily male-dominated professional field that is reputed to be very macho and homophobic.

All in all, CHOKE is about identity, and the choices we make to hide parts of ourselves in order to survive.

Plans for developing CHOKE into a TV series are in full swing.

Rolla Selbak is a triple-minority in the filmmaking world, representing the Queer, the Muslim-American, and the Female.
Her most recent credits include co-producing American Paradise, a reflection of a desperate man in Trump's America, and helming the internationally acclaimed feature film Three Veils, a first of its kind to confront homosexuality within the Muslim-American subculture.
A writer/director of film and TV drama, she is known for bringing strong female characters to the forefront of her work. She imprints her fresh point of view as a queer Arab immigrant having escaped to the U.S after the first Gulf War, and often focuses on socially controversial topics.

Celebrating its 36th Anniversary, Outfest is the Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization promoting equality by creating, sharing, and protecting LGBTQ stories on the screen.

With two thirds of this year's content directed by women, people of color and trans filmmakers, Outfest Los Angeles once again brings together the highest quality of LGBTQ films in the world.

Watch Exclusive cast and director interviews: https://vimeo.com/258755909

OUTFEST
Shorts Program: EMERGING VOICES
CHOKE screens: Saturday, July 21, 2018 at 8:00 PM
Harmony Gold (7655 Sunset Boulevard | Los Angeles, CA 90046)
Screening followed by reception
www.Outfest.org






Most read news of the week


© 2001-2024
top40-charts.com (S4)
about | site map
contact | privacy
Page gen. in 0.0108881 secs // 4 () queries in 0.0052762031555176 secs