BPS 249: The New Film Language of "ScreenLife" with Wanted Director Timur Bekmambetov

I have been a fan of today’s guest since I first saw his mind-blowing film, Night Watch years ago. Timur Bekmambetov is an established director, producer, and writer who has built a name for himself both in his home country, Russia, and here in the U.S., making films, music videos, and commercials.

At first glance at his film, I became obsessed with Timur’s work and his filmmaking style.

He is the producer and director of Day Watch (2006), Wanted (2008), Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter (2012), Profile ( 2021), and many many more.

Timur is a jack of all trades. His journey in the industry started with theater production design and soon he got the directing bug. While honing his directing skills, he took up producing which then led to movie production.

One of my favorite of his films is the genre-bending Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie, James McCovey, and Morgan Freeman.

Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) is an office worker whose life is going nowhere. After his estranged father is murdered, he meets Fox (Angelina Jolie), who recruits him into the Fraternity, a secret society of assassins that takes its orders from Fate itself. Fox and Sloan (Morgan Freeman), the Fraternity's leader, teach Wesley to tap into dormant powers. Though he enjoys his newfound abilities, he begins to suspect that there is more to the Fraternity than meets the eye.

Abraham Lincoln is reinvented as a vampire-killing president in this Timur Bekmambetov-directed action picture starring Benjamin Walker, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rufus Sewell, and Dominic Cooper. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies author Seth Grahame-Smith adapts his own book for 20th Century Fox. Tim Burton produces alongside Bekmambetov and Jim Lemley.

Timur's latest project is Profile. The film was initially released in Russia in 2018 and is set to be released in the US on May 14, 2021.

Based on Anna Erelle's non-fiction book, In The Skin of a Jihadist, the film contextualizes our digital life and fears. It explores the role of digital spaces in the recruitment of young European Women by ISIS. British journalist, Amy Whittaker sets on this investigation by creating a Facebook profile under the alias of Melody Nelson along with a persona online of a woman who has recently converted to Islam. The results are thrilling and eye-opening.

Profile was shot in a new film language called Screenlife.

What is Screenlife?

Screenlife is a new format of visual content that has grown from independent projects to full-length, world-renowned films, documentaries, and TV shows. Its main idea is that everything that the viewer sees happens on the computer, tablet, or smartphone screen. All the events unfold directly on the screen of your device. Instead of a film set — there’s a desktop, instead of the protagonist’s actions — a cursor.

If you are involved in video production, cinema, or even video games, Screenlife is a new expressive environment for you, the potential of which is yet to be discovered. Before your eyes, there will be new tools to work with, such as the screen life recorder.

Bekmambetov produced the Screenlife film Unfriended, in which the action takes place on the screens of protagonists’ computers. With a budget of only $1 million, the movie raised $64 million at the box office worldwide. This new film language is extremely exciting. Timur and I discuss Screenlife, his visual style, his directing process, Hollywood politics, and much more.

Enjoy my conversation with Timur Bekmambetov.

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