News & Events

2014 "Voices for Justice" Human Rights Watch Dinner in Los Angeles

CPG Advisory Board Member, Nancy Cushing-Jones scripted and helped co-produce a special Human Rights Watch tribute to Sidney Sheinberg, former President & COO of MCA/Universal and current Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of HRW. Among those making in-person and video tributes to Mr. Sheinberg were Steven Spielberg, Kathy Kennedy, Barry Meyer, Jane Olson, former HRW Board Chair, and Barry Diller, and members of HRW’s Student Task Force. The Tribute was presented at the HRW Annual Voices for Justice Dinner on November 11th, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. Recipients of the Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism at the Dinner were Shin Dong-Hyuk, from North Korea, and Dr. M.R. Rajagopal, from India. Jason Collins, professional basketball player f0r the Brooklyn Nets and, prior to that the Houston Rockets, was a special guest at the event.

Human Rights Watch works in over ninety countries, addressing the human rights practices of governments of all political stripes, regardless of ethnic or religious persuasion. It defends freedom of thought and expression, due process, and equal protection of the law and a vigorous civil society. Human Rights Watch is widely respected for timely and accurate investigations and research, and for documenting and denouncing murders, disappearances, torture, arbitrary imprisonments, discrimination, and other human rights abuses. For further information on the organization and its work around the world, please see:

www.hrw.org/

Seventeenth Annual Pepperdine National Entertainment Law Moot Court Competition

William Nix served as a Judge, for the fourth year in a row, in the Seventeenth Annual Pepperdine School of Law Entertainment Law Moot Court Competition, held on November 15-16, 2014 at Pepperdine's Malibu Campus. Teams from law schools all across the country argued novel entertainment law issues before some of the best entertainment lawyers in Los Angeles. For more information and to download the competition problem visit:

Pepperdine Law

2014 LATC Los Angeles Immersion Program

Steve Solot, Founder and President of the Latin American Training Center, and CPG Advisory Board Member, along with Kate Lyra, Daniel Dreifuss and Daniel Pisano led the November 3-8, 20-25 global audiovisual industry professionals will have the opportunity to experience an “immersion” into the U.S. audiovisual industry. Through an intensive schedule of meetings, presentations, round tables and networking with film and television executives, consultants, talent agents, entertainment lawyers, each participant in the LATC Immersion Program will have access to commercial, legal, marketing, artistic, academic and new media aspects of the US audiovisual industry in Los Angeles. The 2014 LATC Los Angeles Immersion Program included participants from Belgium, New Zealand, Kenya, Spain, Brazil, China, Myanmar, Australia, Colombia, Japan, Turkey and Cambodia.

Read more ...

Entertainment Media and Sports Dispute Resolution

Four Pepperdine students, Jonathan Bakhsheshian, Ryan Cowan, Cyrus Morgan and Jean Cameron, participated in the October 11-12, 2014 Entertainment Law Negotiation Competition at Southwestern University Law School in Los Angeles. Professors Maureen Weston and William Nix helped prepare and coach the team, focusing on negotiation strategies, techniques and entertainment/media industry terminology and practices. The students worked hard in their preparations of representing the role of counsel for an entertainment production company in negotiations with talent and a television network collective bargaining contracts. Thirty two teams, from twenty different law schools across the country, competed this year. Entertainment industry lawyers served as judges and gave helpful and positive feedback to our students, who honed their negotiating and teamwork skills together.

Pepperdine students Cameron Jean and Jason Maves competed at National Sports Law Negotiation Competition at Thomas Jefferson School of Law Forum in San Diego, September 19-21, 2014. Students from thirty-two law schools across the country competed in this competition where students acted in attorney teams representing in negotiations

3 FIRST STEPS FOR COLLABORATING ON CREATIVE PROJECTS

Creativity is not always practiced in the splendor of solitude, and it is not always an individual sport. Creative projects often required teamwork: collaborations among songwriters, screenwriters, architects, advertising agency execs, party planners, or trial lawyers.

The ability to collaborate with other people will often mean the difference between success or failure of any given project.

Read More

Tribute to Dr. Scott Field, Production Advisor to Gibran Biographical Feature Film (In Memoriam). We note with great sadness, the loss of Dr. Scott Field, who passed in September 2014 as a result of a hiking accident in the French Alps. He was a steadfast advocate for the unity views of Kahlil Gibran and an active production advisor to the Gibran biographical feature film. He was an expert in international affairs and the Middle East. He worked and traveled widely in the region since the early 1990s. He has been a conference speaker and otherwise involved with the Skoll Foundation and the Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Dr. Field served as the Middle East Manager at the Skoll Global Threats Fund, where he led the development of philanthropic initiatives aimed at mitigating conflict in the region, particularly in Israel-Palestine and Syria. In this capacity he has also acted as an advisor to Participant Media on the films State 194 and The Square. At the time of his passing, he was serving as the Political Officer at the United Nations Office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary General for Syria.

Previously, Scott had been a lecturer and briefer in International Relations and Middle East politics for the U.S. Department of Defense at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, and a World Peace Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He maintained an affiliation as a Visiting Scholar at U.C. Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies and has written numerous articles on current issues in Middle East politics for Al Jazeera, The Daily Beast and Al Monitor. He was also a champion footballer, who left the sport to pursue his academic and political studies.

Scott had a longstanding personal connection with Kahlil Gibran’s hometown of Becharré, and the nearby Cedars of God, where he celebrated his ceremony of marriage, and which he first visited in 1995.

The Toronto International Film Festival (September 4-14, 2014) has announced over 40 titles — a mix of awards contenders, star-powered indies, and international art-house fare — screening in its Gala and Special Presentations program this September, including a Special Presentation of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, Canada/France/Lebanon/Qatar/USA World Premiere Roger Allers, Gaëtan Brizzi, Paul Brizzi, Joan C. Gratz, Mohammed Saeed Harib, Tomm Moore, Nina Paley, Bill Plympton, Joann Sfar and Michal Socha Inspired by the beloved classic, Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet is a richly-animated story and celebration of Gibran’s book, created by artists, animators and musicians from around the world. Starring Liam Neeson, Salma Hayek-Pinault, John Krasinski, Frank Langella, Alfred Molina, John Rhys-Davies and Quvenzhané Wallis.

Variety

ScreenDaily

Special Presentations

The Center for Copyright Information (CCI) released a May 28, 2014 Report on the progress made to date implementing the Copyright Alert System – a voluntary initiative that was created with input from content owners, rights holders, Internet service providers (ISPs), and consumer advocacy groups. The Copyright Alert System was designed to educate consumers about the misuse of their Internet accounts to access illegal copies of music, films, and television shows – and about the large and growing list of legal sources of digital content.

www.creativefuture.org

www.copyrightinformation.org

CANNES: Salma Hayek Presenting ‘The Prophet’ as Work-in-Progress 

Dave McNary Film Reporter@Variety

Cannes Film Festival has set an Official Selection work-in-progress screening of the animated feature “Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet” on Saturday, May 17th. The screening will feature highlights from the film and be presented by producer Salma Hayek-Pinault and director Roger Allers (“The Lion King”).

The story portrays the unlikely friendship between a young mischievous girl and an imprisoned poet.The event will also include animation directors involved with the film: Tomm Moore (“The Secret of Kells”), Joan Gratz (“Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase”), Joann Sfar (“The Rabbi’s Cat”), Bill Plympton (“In Your Face”), and Paul and Gaetan Brizzi (“The Hunchback of Notre Dame”). Composer Gabriel Yared will also participate.

Wild Bunch International is handling international sales at Cannes, excluding North America, which will be sold by Participant Media.

The film includes the voices of Hayek-Pinault, Liam Neeson, John Krasinski, Frank Langella, Alfred Molina and Quvenzhane Wallis. Producers are Hayek-Pinault, Clark Peterson, Jose Tamez, William Nix and Ron Senkowski.

Participant Media is financing along with Doha Film Institute, FFA Private Bank, MyGroup Lebanon, Financiere Pinault, and Code Red Productions.

http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/theDailyArticle/60919.html

http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/100016282/year/2014.html

'The Prophet' Official Website

Festival De Cannes Video

Elizabeth Gilbert: Success, failure and the drive to keep creating. Elizabeth Gilbert was once an "unpublished diner waitress," devastated by rejection letters. And yet, in the wake of the success of 'Eat, Pray, Love,' she found herself identifying strongly with her former self. With beautiful insight, Gilbert reflects on why success can be as disorienting as failure and offers a simple -- though hard -- way to carry on, regardless of outcomes.

More Information