NoHo-based film director, producer and editor Ester Brym has been selected to direct the documentary film “Critic’s Dilemma” about NoHo Magazine and the beginning of the NoHo Arts District in North Hollywood, California.
NoHo filmmaker Ester Brym
“Ester is a perfect fit for this project on several levels,” says “Critic’s Dilemma” producer Jim Bursch. “She has successfully produced her first feature documentary, which was recently selected by Arclight Cinemas for their film festival, and it’s about YouTube, so Ester has unique experience and insight into new media and social media. Not only that, but she is a terrific filmmaker. She knows how to tell a compelling story on the screen. And the clincher, of course, is that she lives in the NoHo Arts District.”
A native of Prague, in 1997 Brym moved to New York City to study film making. She worked in independent cinema until 2007 when she decided to move to Los Angeles to direct her first feature film “Butterflies.”
"Butterflies" movie poster
An award-winning documentary feature, “Butterflies” puts YouTube on the big screen and introduces the audience to the world of new and social media.
“Butterflies is the first film, that profiles the life of Internet celebrity as a new phenomenon,” says journalist Veronika Bednárová in her article in Reflex.
The film premiered at Action on Film International Film Festival in Pasadena, California on July 27, 2009 and won the Alan J. Bailey Excellence Award in Documentary Filmmaking. It was also nominated for Best Social Commentary. In 2010 the film won the 10 Degrees Hotter Awards for Best Documentary at Valley Film Festival.
Recently, “Butterflies” was selected for the ArcLight Cinemas’ Documentary Film Festival and was screened on November 7, 2011 in Hollywood.
Brym’s short film “12 Hours” was composed of footage that was shot for Ridley Scott’s “Life in a Day”, in which Brym took part. “12 Hours” showed at 2011 Action on Film Festival and Valley Film Festival and was reviewed by film critic Fred Topel.
“Critic’s Dilemma” is a documentary film being produced by NoHo20 Productions (http://noho20.com) and tells the story of NoHo Magazine and the beginning of the NoHo Arts District in North Hollywood, California. It is about a community that harbored the unlikely vision of someday being comparable to the NoHos of New York and London. It is about a publisher who was uniquely unqualified to shepherd and champion a creative community that barely recognized itself. It is about how a person and a community discovered themselves and did not always like what they found, but nonetheless found something closer to the truth.