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COVID19… SINS & VIRTUES ANTHOLOGY PREMIERES TO BENEFIT THE ACTORS FUND
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In the midst of a locked-down Hollywood, over fifty filmmakers rose to a new artistic challenge. Now, the film they made will support others in the industry.
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Los Angeles, California (Monday, March 15, 2021) - The first tumbleweeds had barely started to collect on the streets of Hollywood under COVID-19 lockdown before fifty-plus filmmakers figured out a way to get cameras rolling again. Coordinating themselves using nothing but cell phones and Zoom, the filmmakers of the feature length anthology film COVID19… Sins and Virtues leaned into the restrictions of this new isolation in a business that thrives on social contact and in-person collaboration.
COVID19…Sins and Virtues will premiere on March 20, 2021, one year to the day from the first California lockdowns in 2020. All proceeds from the premiere will benefit The Actors Fund, an organization devoted to supporting performers and behind-the-scenes workers across the entertainment industry. A Q&A with the filmmakers will immediately follow, moderated by Sally Colon-Petree, Mario Calderon and Lizza Monet- Morales. The Premiere will be at 4:00 p.m. PST and details are at www.actorsfund.org
The rules were simple: use only consumer-grade cameras (phones, webcams, etc.) and assets on-hand at lockdown, plan and produce your episode while adhering to the government-mandated isolation, and use, as your theme, the pandemic and one of the seven cardinal sins or virtues, which were randomly assigned to each filmmaking team.
The result is a film that feels viscerally recognizable to all of us who have come face to face over the past year with our laziness, our bravery, our frustrations, our resilience, our selfishness and our generosities. All the sins and virtues we’d never before had to confront at these extremes.
“Creativity nor friendship can ever be stopped,” says producer Alex Mendoza. “The main goal was to have fun and find something to do to keep our sanity. To our surprise, this ended up being an entertaining, educating, and, we hope, inspiring film. What we, across the whole industry, have learned over this time will likely modify what we do in the future.”
For Mendoza, COVID19… Sins and Virtues brings filmmaking back to its most basic form: a bunch of friends getting together, taking an impossible circumstance, and spinning it into art, making something great solely out of a shared vision and the assets on hand.
COVID19...Sins and Virtues is produced by Alex Mendoza and True Form Films Founder, actress/producer Yeniffer Behrens (The Way Back, Grey’s Anatomy) and co-founder & partner, actor/producer Mauricio Mendoza (Resurrection Blvd., Blow.)
Click HERE to see the COVID19...Sins and Virtues trailer.
Filmmakers available for interviews
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The Actors Fund is a national human services organization that fosters stability and resiliency and provides a safety net for performing arts and entertainment professionals over their lifespan. Through offices in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, The Fund serves everyone in film, theater, television, music, opera, radio and dance with programs including social services and emergency financial assistance, health care and insurance counseling, housing, and secondary employment and training services.
Since March 18, 2020, The Actors Fund has provided more than $20 million+ in emergency financial assistance to over 15,700+ people who work in performing arts and entertainment. With shutdowns on Broadway and in film and television, theater, concerts, dance, music and many other areas of entertainment, the need is great and growing. This emergency financial assistance is helping our most vulnerable and those in financial crisis to cover basic living expenses, such as food, essential medications, utilities and more. www.actorsfund.org
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About the producers:
Alex Mendoza is a veteran film distribution executive having worked on the sales and distribution of libraries adding to more than 4,000 films and TV series in all rights, worldwide, including several blockbusters like Dirty Dancing, Princess Bride, Hamburger Hill, Young Guns, and the Ace Ventura series, while working for companies like Vestron, Live Entertainment, Saban and Morgan Creek. In association with the American Cinematheque, he is also the founder and Executive Director of APERTURA Showcase, a periodical screening of Latino films at the epicenter of the film industry, The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.
Award winning actress/filmmaker Yeniffer Behrens can be seen in the recently released movie The Way Back with Ben Affleck. Series credits include Grey’s Anatomy, American Horror Story, Dave, Grace & Frankie, Bosch, Young Sheldon, Nip Tuck, In Plain Sight, I Hate My Teenage Daughter, Desperate Housewives, Sons of Anarchy, East Los High, Boston Legal, Jag, The Agency, CSI: Vegas. She received rave reviews as Marianna Erosa (recurring role) in the Daytime Series General Hospital on ABC. Yeniffer’s film credits include The Specialist with Sylvester Stallone, Seven Pounds with Will Smith & Rosario Dawson, A Day Without a Mexican, After School, El Contratista, Taco Shop, Fighting for Freedom, American Flyer, Por tu Culpa, faith-based films The Pastor and The Law of Moises. & Lifetime’s My Neighbor’s Daughter, landing her a positive note in Variety. As a filmmaker, she is a natural born storyteller, Mi Amor marking her directorial debut in 2017-2018 and winning Yen her first “excellence in directing” award at the prestigious Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema. As the founder & CEO of True Form Films: Yeniffer is currently in development for a coming-of-age story Her Choices, which represents and empowers Latina women. In addition to her acting & producing careers, the former Miss Teen Miami has a passion for inclusion, dual language education, mentoring & championing aspiring artists who dream of being in the entertainment industry. She and her husband Mauricio Mendoza are making a difference daily in the lives of many young artists as they have pivoted online to coach and mentor on their platform Shortcut2Hollywood.biz, the educational division of their multicultural production company True Form Films. They offer a 15 minute free career consultation for aspiring actors & filmmakers. Follow them on IG and Facebook @shortcut2hollywood
Mauricio Mendoza is an award-winning producer, partner, and co-founder of True Form Films, as well as an actor and writer. In an assertive move to change things in Hollywood he became executive producer of the Imagen Award-winning web series Encounters. Production credits include: El Contratista (Amazon), After School, Fighting Chance, Sin Vergüenzas, The Shifting and Intolerance; Short films: Mi Amor, It Can Only Be Used Once (directed by Michael DeLorenzo), From Now On, directed by legendary actress Ivonne Coll (Jane the Virgin), Between the Lights, the award-winning One directed by iconic actor Carlos Carrasco (Blood In Blood Out); music videos The Power Of One, Recuperar, documentaries Him and Her, and The Real Faces of Dialysis. His acting credits include four groundbreaking Latino-based TV shows including as a series regular in Angeles (Sony/TriStar/Telemundo) Resurrection Blvd. (Showtime), El Desconocido (CineLatino/Netflix) and La Quinceañera (Stage 13/Warner Bros.), as well as The Rookie, Adam Ruins Everything and Counterpunch, and in films America's Family, Alive! and Out of Place and over 50 theater credits.
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