Posts Tagged ‘Myrna Loy’

Richard talks about redheads at the Toronto International Film Festival

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“I love being a redhead” – Sloan Avrich

 “I wish I had red hair.” – Richard Crouse, film historian, author

Known for his revealing and controversial feature length docs on media moguls, director Barry Avrich embarks on a new direction with Red Alert, a 9 minute short inspired by his daughter Sloan, that will have its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF14) in the Discovery program.

In Red Alert, Sloan, a 10 yr old redhead, is distraught when she discovers on the internet that red hair will be extinct within one hundred years.  She sets out to make a documentary on the subject and debunk the myth so she and her fellow gingers can relax with the assurance that their legacy is not under threat.

Red Alert is the first film collaboration by father, daughter team Barry Avrich and Sloan Avrich.  One day while working in his home office Sloan asked him why he always made films about subjects she either didn’t know (Lew Wasserman, Bob Guccione) or wasn’t interested in (Harvey Weinstein, Garth Drabinsky).  Barry challenged her to come up with her own ideas of what she’d like to see and proposed that they make a film together.  Sloan had recently run across an article online stating that redheads would be extinct in 100 years , and, rather alarmed, she decided she had to get to the bottom of the matter to see if it was really true.

Thus Red Alert was born.  Sloan began researching the subject, unearthing footage and online articles about Kick A Ginger Day, an anti-ginger episode from South Park and a 2007 NBC The Today Show interview with Steve Warrington redhead activist and founder of online community https://www.redhedd.com.  Along the way Sloan finds arguments for and against the future of red hair and learns to not believe everything you read on the internet.

Sloan also researched, selected, recruited and prepared interviews with experts including film historian and critic Richard Crouse, who reveals how redheaded stars like Lana Turner and Myrna Loy became even more famous during the transition from black & white to colour film when their glamorous locks registered with audiences.  Geneticist Amro Zayed explains the science behind red hair, and celebrity hair stylist Daniel Fiori, model Lucy Liberatore and fellow gingers give their best tips for redheads.

“Red Alert” is a World Premiere in Discovery at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2014