Peter Lanzani to Make Directorial Debut with Biopic About Argentine ‘80s Rock Icon Luca Prodan

Peter Lanzani is set to make his directorial debut…

The 32-year-old Argentine actor, singer and former child model – star of some of the greatest films and series to come out of Argentina of late, including Argentina, 1985, El Angel, The Clan, 4X4, and Un Gallo Para Esculapio – will helm a biopic of Argentine ‘80s rock icon Luca Prodan.

Peter LanzaniLanzani will also play Prodan.

Two other movers and shakers on Argentina’s film-TV scene, Argentina’s Armando Bo, an Academy Award winner for the screenplay of Alejandro González Inárritu’s “Birdman, and Luis Ortega, the multi-awarded director of Lulu and El Angel, will serve as executive producers.

The bio pic will center on the early years of Prodán, an extraordinary figure on Argentina’s ‘80s rock scene, educated like British king Charles III at Scotland’s Gordonstoun boarding school, a Virgin music exec in London and founder in Argentina of Sumo, whose combination of Joy Division-style rock, post-punk funk and reggae-ska took Buenos Aires youth by storm.

Highly cultured, though a gentleman with flashes of punkish aggro on stage, even by the time that Prodán hit Argentina in 1981 he had developed two addictions: Gin and heroine. The combination left him dead in 1987 at the age of 34.

Lanzani will co-direct the film with Martín Fisner, an assistant DP on El Marginal. Rodolfo Palacios, Sergio Olguín, Lanzani and Fisner are writing the screenplay.

The big question is what through line they will drive between ‘70s class-bound, punk-energized Britain and an Argentina of the early ‘80s emerging from a bloody dictatorship.

The biopic is set up at Bo’s Rebolución, behind his 2012 Sundance hit, The Last Elvis, and his second feature as a director, Animal, and Bo’s About Entertainment, founded in 2020 to focus on high quality entertainment for broad audiences such as El Presidente Season 2, for Prime Video.

Ortega will produce out of El Despacho, launched in 2020 in Buenos Aires by Ortega, Esteban Perroud and Palacios to develop original ideas, independent formats and big scale work, whose auteur work stands out in the international market.

Its first project, directed by Ortega, The Jockey, starring Úrsula Corberó and Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, is now in post-production.

Dawson Launches Online Platform Dedicated to Promote and Foster African Culture

Rosario Dawson’s latest philanthropic project is all about Africa…

The 35-year-old Puerto Rican and Afro-Cuban American actress has partnered with her longtime friend and business partner, Abrima Erwiah, to launch Studio One Eighty Nine, an online platform dedicated to promote and foster African culture and African-inspired content through creative projects.

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Dawson, who has advocated positive social change through various organizations like Voto Latino, the ONE campaign and the Vagina Monolugues-inspired movement V-Day, came up with the idea to launch the platform after a trip in June 2011 to the City of Joy, a V-Day supported community dedicated to empowering women survivors of violence.

“We were loving the empowerment that was there. It wasn’t just a different philosophy of life. It was saying ‘you’re powerful, you’re strong.'” Dawson tells Pret-a-Reporter. “The whole thing was turning pain into power.”

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After meeting with members of the community, Dawson and Erwiah recognized what the women had to offer (“We just felt their kindred spirits,” says Dawson) and what they could give in return. Hence, it was the start of a beautiful relationship with the local creatives and the launch of their project.

The website is currently divided into three sections: an online magazine for showcasing African-inspired creative content; a supporting agency to help organizations with marketing and communications services; and a private fashion collection called Fashion Rising Collection, an artisan-produced label launched in support of V-Day’s One Billion Rising campaign to end violence against women.

“Let’s not just make [the movement] a one-day event, let’s create something that’s going to be impactful and yearlong, so that’s why we decided to call the line Fashion Rising because we’re employing women. We’re not going ‘hey we’re going to keep raising funds to keep your kid in school,’ we’re going to give you help and support for what you’re already doing,” explains Dawson. “That was the whole premise — we’re going to rise together. We’re going to collaborate and you’re going to be able to put your own kids through school.”

Dawson and Abrima, who both travel often to Ghana as well as other African countries, work directly with resident artisans, designers, artists, photographers and bloggers.

“We’re trying to tell long-term sustainable stories that are coming out of Africa to the outside market, as well as the inside market. It’s hard to find brands that are really working through the whole value chain,” says Erwiah, who previously worked at luxury label Bottega Veneta for 10 years, of the economic opportunities that have been created in Ghana, as well as other African countries, with the launch of Fashion Rising Collection. “We do our own textile to sewing and cutting to like every element of craft through the value chain.”

Erwiah adds: “By creating this platform that creates a demand for it, we’re then able to benefit the community by creating jobs because that’s an order, not just for sewing or cutting, it’s an order for every step on that chain.”

Currently selling on their website, the second Fashion Rising Collection (the first was sold at a pop-up shop with Urban Outfitters in L.A. and New York this past May) features pieces such as a green Aggie-print hand-Batik cotton military jacket and lime green ODLR-print hand-Batik terry cloth kimono, as well as Bottletop pink recycled pull can leather tassle purse and vegan leather carry-alls and coin purses.

Designers featured on the e-commerce include Geren Ford, Menzer Hajiyeva and Lulu, to name a few.

Trujillo’s Metallica Releases Garage Demo of “Lords of Summer”

Robert Trujillo is one of the lords of summer…

Following footage of a new song surfacing earlier this week from a performance in Colombia, the 49-year-old Mexican American musician and his Metallica bandmates have released a garage demo of the track, “Lords of Summer,” on the band’s YouTube page, according to Rolling Stone.

 

Metallica last released new material in 2008, when Death Magnetic, the band’s ninth album, was released, hitting No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

The new eight-minute song, an epic in the vein of DeatRobert Trujilloh Magnetic — all its songs clocked at above five minutes — features a mid-tempo lurch of guitars and drums before launching into a riff reminiscent of its earlier thrash metal days, as well as of Death Magnetic opener “That Was Just Your Life.”

“Go trade your darkness for the sun / Soon the lords of summer shall return,” frontman James Hetfield sings before guitarist Kirk Hammett contributes a characteristically shredding solo.

Hammett told Billboard last January that the band was about to convene to record a new album, which would be its 10th since its debut in the early ’80s.

That album doesn’t currently have any sort of timeframe for its release, nor is “Lords of Summer” ensured a spot on that album; drummer Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone in a recent interview that the song could very well not make the final cut.

Death Magnetic sold 490,000 copies upon its initial release in 2008. Since, the band recorded a record with Lou Reed, titled “Lulu,” in 2011 and dropped a live concert film, Through the Never, last year.