On Sunday, June 2, IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival continued with a Season 4 premiere screening of OWN’s Queen Sugar, executive produced by Ava DuVernay, Oprah Winfrey, Paul James and Anthony Sparks, who also serves as a showrunner. Following the Season 4 premiere episode screening, actors Dawn-Lyen Gardner, Kofi Siriboe and Rutina Wesley, showrunner and episode writer Anthony Sparks and producing director and episode director Cheryl Dunye discussed the series with the Festival’s co-creative director, Matt Zoller Seitz.
Following, NBC’s The Good Place actor William Jackson Harper and Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland had a close-up conversation about the beloved series following a screening of the Season 4 finale episode. During the panel, William and Melanie touched on how this comedy series, centered on questions of ethics and philosophy, has served as a source of encouragement for William through the current political landscape: “Playing Chidi has absolutely played into how I move through the world just because I feel like the response from the audience to something that’s so optimistic but snarky at the same time, it’s sort of shifted the way I feel about people. You know, we’re living in kind of a trash time. It’s nice that people are latching onto a bunch of people caring for each other, looking out for each other and doing the best they can. And the fact that that resonates so strongly is really encouraging.”
CBS All Access’ The Twilight Zone actress Sanaa Lathan and screenwriter Selwyn Seyfu Hinds sat down with Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland following a screening of the stunning black-and-white episode of the series, “Replay” in the afternoon on Sunday. During their discussion, Selwyn spoke about working on the series with executive producer Jordan Peele: “I knew sort of structurally what I wanted to do. Jordan helped me with the how.”
Next up on Sunday, June 2, Festival attendees, including actor Keegan-Michael Key, enjoyed an exclusive sneak preview screening of the Season 1 finale episode of Cinemax’s fan favorite series, Warrior. Following the screening, Bruce Lee’s daughter and series executive producer Shannon Lee and series creator and executive producer Jonathan Tropper chatted with Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz about the gritty, action-packed crime drama. Lee said: “The thing that I love about this show is that it holds his [my father] energy. He doesn’t have to be in it for it to hold the energy of Bruce Lee and to bring that across. Yes, he came up with the nugget of the idea but in order for the show to be on the screen and you to watch it, so many other people had to be involved in a huge way, and Jonathan is key among them in terms of creating the world. But also the fact that we all held to the energy of it and really had so much care for what it meant to have Bruce Lee’s name be on a show and I’m really grateful for that. He wrote other treatments, just saying.”
The evening closed with a live screening of AMC’s “Fear the Walking Dead” season five premiere, and cast members Alycia Debnam Carey, Colman Domingo, Jenna Elfman, Austin Amelio and Danay Garcia, and Scott M. Gimple, Executive Producer of the series and Chief Content Officer of The Walking Dead Universe joined Matt Zoller Seitz to break down the premiere episode and what is to come this season. Gimple teased: “I will say, there is an exciting animal companion coming up this season, and the person that is their companion thinks that this animal is going to be a star.”
Actor Keegan-Michael Key at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
(L-R) OWN’s Queen Sugar actors Dawn-Lyen Gardner, Kofi Siriboe and Rutina Wesley at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Lou Aguilar
(L-R) Split Screen Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz and OWN’s Queen Sugar actors Rutina Wesley, Dawn-Lyen Gardner and Kofi Siriboe, showrunner and episode producer Anthony Sparks and producing director and episode director Cheryl Dunye at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Lou Aguilar
(L-R) Split Screen Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz and OWN’s Queen Sugar actors Rutina Wesley, Dawn-Lyen Gardner and Kofi Siriboe, showrunner and episode producer Anthony Sparks and producing director and episode director Cheryl Dunye, and Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Lou Aguilar
NBC’s The Good Place actor William Jackson Harper at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Lou Aguilar
(L-R) Split Screens Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland, NBC’s The Good Place actor William Jackson Harper and Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Lou Aguilar
(L-R) Split Screens Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland and NBC’s The Good Place actor William Jackson Harper at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Lou Aguilar
CBS All Access’ The Twilight Zone actress Sanaa Lathan at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
(L-R) CBS All Access’ The Twilight Zone screenwriter Selwyn Seyfu Hinds and actress Sanaa Lathan with Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
(L-R) Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland, Cinemax’s Warrior creator and executive producer Jonathan Tropper and executive producer Shannon Lee, Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz and Festival executive director Raphaela Neihausen at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
(L-R) Actor Keegan-Michael Key and Cinemax’s Warrior executive producer Shannon Lee and creator and executive producer Jonathan Tropper at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
(L-R) Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz and Cinemax’s Warrior executive producer Shannon Lee and creator and executive producer Jonathan Tropper at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
(L-R) AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead actors Austin Amelio, Colman Domingo, Alycia Debnam-Carey and Danay Garcia, executive producer of Fear the Walking Dead and Chief Content Officer of The Walking Dead Universe, Scott M. Gimple, and Fear the Walking Dead actor Jenna Elfman at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
(L-R) AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead actors Austin Amelio, Colman Domingo, Alycia Debnam-Carey and Danay Garcia, executive producer of Fear the Walking Dead and Chief Content Officer of The Walking Dead Universe, Scott M. Gimple, Fear the Walking Dead actor Jenna Elfman, and Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
(L-R) Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz, executive producer of Fear the Walking Dead and Chief Content Officer of The Walking Dead Universe, Scott M. Gimple, and AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead actors Alycia Debnam-Carey, Colman Domingo, Jenna Elfman, Austin Amelio and Danay Garcia at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
Split Screens Festival is produced and presented by IFC Center, one of New York’s leading independent cinemas. Collaborating with broadcasters, cable networks and streaming services, the festival highlights great content from a range of platforms to bring together the creative talent behind TV’s most acclaimed shows and sophisticated New York audiences. The 2019 program, celebrating the art and craft of storytelling, puts a spotlight on wide-ranging themes including identity, the mystery of existence itself, dystopian realities and alternate timelines, and invites fans to enjoy screenings and events that transport us into any number of time periods and places, be it a late-1800s South Dakota town or the tensions of New York City at the end of the 1980s. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @SplitScreensTV.
FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS FROM FRIDAY, MAY 31ST AND SATURDAY JUNE 1ST
On Friday, May 31st the Festival hosted a close-up conversation with Pamela Adlon, FX’s Better Things executive producer, writer, director and actress, after a screening of the Season 3 finale of the critically-acclaimed series. During her conversation with Split Screens Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland, Adlon gave a piece of advice to the audience about dreaming big: “Try to imagine it, because maybe it’ll happen sooner...and maybe do sit-ups every day.” Adlon also went on to discuss how both she and her daughters identify with the character ‘Frankie’ in Better Things: “My kids live in a very non-binary way. It’s fluid. When I was growing up, I was androgynous. Now it’s called fluid, now it’s called non-binary. And my kids are all very comfortable in that world, as are their friends. It makes me very happy that we are able to hold that. It’s like a little Faberge egg.”
Also on Friday, fans enjoyed a live screening of HBO’s highly anticipated Deadwood: The Movie at the SVA Theatre, some dressed in costume. Following a sold out screening, Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz took the stage with Robin Weigert who portrays ‘Calamity Jane’ and director Daniel Minahan, plus actor Ian McShane who plays ‘Al Swearengen’ joined the conversation live via satellite. When asked if she ever thought this day would come, Robin revealed: “I started to think it was going to happen when [creator] David Milch showed me pages of what he was working on and I thought it was too beautiful not to happen, and then it was just a matter of holding onto that faith through many ups and downs.” McShane shocked crowds when he added: “It was a pleasure to take part in this MAYBE final exercise...well look at Al, at the end the old finger is still moving.” When Seitz questioned McShane, reminding him he had previously said this was the last one, McShane clapped back: “I’m f*cking Al Swearengen, I lie a lot.”
On Saturday, June 1, Christopher Abbott sat down with Seitz to discuss his starring role in Hulu’s new hit series Catch-22. On working with Grant Heslov, George Clooney and Ellen Kuras, Abbott jokingly said their acting notes for him were: “Better. More. Slower. Faster.” He added: “The whole thing was cross-boarded so on any given day I was shooting multiple scenes from multiple episodes with all the different directors...that in itself was challenging. All three of them were there all the time, so you had the individual experience of working with each director and all of them, for lack of going too deep, were great, but at a certain point it just became a fever dream. Whoever was in front of me giving notes, I would nod my head, give a thumbs up and go do it. It felt insane.”
Following, Sam Esmail, the writer-director who has produced two TV series in a similar vein, USA’s Golden Globe® award-winning hacker drama Mr. Robot and Amazon’s military conspiracy thriller Homecoming, stopped by the festival to take the audience on a tour of the paranoid thriller genre, from the distant past through the present day, and its influence on his own work. He surprised Mr. Robot fans with exclusive news that his wife, actress Emmy Rossum (Shameless), who was in the audience, will make a cameo appearance in the upcoming final season. In discussing how today’s environment is the richest for paranoid thrillers since the ‘70s, Esmail said: “Trump blows Nixon out of the water. Trump is ten times worse than Nixon and we can’t bring him down…We don’t even have to catch him on tape, he just tweets out admission after admission and it doesn’t seem to matter, and there weirdly feels a little more of a hopelessness.”
FX’s Better Things executive producer, writer, director and actress Pamela Adlon at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
(L-R) Split Screens Festival executive director Raphaela Neihausen, FX’s Better Things executive producer, writer, director and actress Pamela Adlon and Split Screens Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland at the IFC Center in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
HBO’s Deadwood: The Movie actress Robin Weigert at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival at the SVA Theatre in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Simon Luethi
(L-R) Split Screens Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz, and HBO’s Deadwood: The Movie director Daniel Minahan and actress Robin Weigert at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival at the SVA Theatre in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Simon Luethi
(L-R) Split Screens Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz and HBO’s Deadwood: The Movie actress Robin Weigert, director Daniel Minahan and actor Ian McShane via satellite at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival at the SVA Theatre in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Simon Luethi
Hulu’s Catch 22 actor Christopher Abbott at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Lou Aguilar
(L-R) Split Screens Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland and executive director Raphaela Neihausen, Hulu’s Catch 22 actor Christopher Abbott and Split Screens Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz at the IFC Center in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Lou Aguilar
(L-R) Split Screens Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz and Hulu’s Catch 22 actor Christopher Abbott at the third annual Split Screens Festival at the IFC Center in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Lou Aguilar
USA’s Mr. Robot and Amazon’s Homecoming creator, writer, director, producer Sam Esmail at the third annual Split Screens Festival at the IFC Center in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
(L-R) Split Screens Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland, USA’s Mr. Robot and Amazon’s Homecoming creator, writer, director, producer Sam Esmail and Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz at the third annual Split Screens Festival at the IFC Center in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
USA’s Mr. Robot and Amazon’s Homecoming creator, writer, director, producer Sam Esmail and Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz at the third annual Split Screens Festival at the IFC Center in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
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