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QUEST
TYPE: Documentary Feature
GENRE: Documentary
STATUS: In Distribution
LOGLINE
QUEST is a portrait of an American Family living in North Philadelphia captured over the course of ten years.
SYNOPSIS
Filmed with vérité intimacy for over a decade, QUEST is the moving portrait of a family in North Philadelphia. Christopher “Quest” Rainey, along with his wife Christine’a, aka “Ma Quest,” open the door to their home music studio, which serves as a creative sanctuary from the strife that grips their neighborhood. Over the years, the family evolves as everyday life brings a mix of joy and unexpected crisis. Set against the backdrop of a country now in turmoil, QUEST is a tender depiction of an American family whose journey is a profound testament to love, healing and hope.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
Jonathan Olshefski is an artist and documentary filmmaker. QUEST is his first feature length documentary. He strives to tell intimate and nuanced stories that honor his subjects’ complexity by employing a production process that emphasizes collaboration, dialogue, and relationship to amplify their voices and reflect their points of view in an artful way.
KEY CREW
Jonathan Olshefski - Director / Cinematographer
Jonathan Olshefski is an artist and documentary filmmaker. Quest: The Fury and the Sound is his first feature-length documentary. Olshefski strives to tell intimate and nuanced stories that honor his subjects’ complexity by employing a production process that emphasizes collaboration, dialogue, and relationship. Jonathan lives in Philadelphia and is an Associate Professor at Rowan University where he teaches in the department of Radio, TV, and Film.
Sabrina Schmidt Gordon - Producer
Sabrina Schmidt Gordon is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. She is the co-director, producer, and the editor of BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, winner of Best Film Directed by a Woman of Color at 2015's African Diaspora International Film Festival. Sabrina is also the co-producer and editor of Documented, the story of Pulitzer Prize-winning undocumented journalist Jose Antonio Vargas and Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes (Independent Lens, 2007), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and made the Chicago Tribune’s “Best Documentaries of 2007." Sabrina teaches documentary filmmaking at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and is Co-Chair of the Black Documentary Collective (BDC).
Lindsay Utz - Editor
Lindsay Utz edited the award-winning documentary Bully, which was released nationally in 2012, and was shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Most recently she edited the Sundance supported In Country, which had its 2014 premiere at Full Frame Documentary Festival and was named as one of POV’s top 5 films at Hot Docs. Utz’s work also includes the ballet documentary First Position, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011. In 2012, Utz was awarded the Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship in honor of Errol Morris’ late editor.
Connect With The Filmmakers:
ACCOLADES
UPDATE - April 07, 2016
We are excited to announce that we are entering into a co-production relationship with ITVS. This is exciting because it ensure that we will have the opportunity to reach millions of households through public television broadcast.
UPDATE - January 22, 2016
Quest: The Fury and the Sound was recently selected for a MacArthur Documentary grant. There were 19 selections out of almost 500 submissions!
Press release:
https://www.macfound.org/press/press-releases/macarthur-awards-19-documentary-film-grants/
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