Käla Mandrake

Käla Mandrake
Born
💼 Occupation	Photographer, author, producer

Käla Mandrake is an American photographer, author and producer. She is best known for her black-and-white portraits of New Yorkers from various subcultures. She began photographing New York City's avant-garde East Village scene at 15 years old. Her early subjects were squatters, punks, and homeless teenagers. She later focused on local musicians and performing artists (including burlesque dancers, cabaret singers, and freak show variety acts). Mandrake began a professional photography career in 1999, providing services for musicians, actors and models to be published in magazines, newspapers, band album covers, and websites. In 2003, Mandrake went back to school and began her studies in writing, film and media, minoring in music. Although she continues her work in photography, these studies marked the beginning of a career path in writing, producing for TV and eventually the publication of her books.

Photographer

At the age of thirteen, Mandrake received her first camera and shortly after attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City. She auditioned and was accepted for both Music and Art, choosing a Major in Art. It was at LaGuardia that she began darkroom photography lessons with black-and-white film. Mandrake began photographing New York City’s avant-garde East Village scene at fifteen years old. Her early subjects were squatters, punks, and runaway teenagers. She frequented abandoned buildings, makeshift venues and parks to photograph these individuals. She later focused on local musicians and performing artists including burlesque dancers, cabaret singers, and freakshow variety acts. Her photographs have been likened to the works of photographers Diane Arbus and Nan Goldin, with an emphasis on the psychological aspects of her photographic subjects. "Mandrake is a native New Yorker who captures something raw and real about her subjects that can at times expose more than the viewer or the subject may want to be revealed. Her portraits have been compared to what Jungian psychologists call the 'shadow'." Mandrake began a photography business at twenty-three years old, providing services for musicians, actors, and models to be published in magazines, newspapers, band album covers, and websites. She furthered her photographic studies at the School of Visual Arts and as Teacher Assistant for black-and-white darkroom students at the International Center of Photography at 1130 Fifth Avenue. Ten years later Mandrake compiled select photographs and quotes form these individuals in a book titled, Underground.

Producer

In 2006, Mandrake began working as producer at BBC Headquarters for America . In early 2009, she left BBC and began work as post-production producer and editor at HBO in New York City. In 2011, Mandrake was one of a team of producers-editors for the premiere launch of the popular HBO original series, "Game of Thrones", entire first season. She also produced and edited for Cinemax and Nickelodeon. She worked as a researcher on the 2010 feature motion picture "Fair Game" by award-winning director Doug Liman, starring Naomi Watts In 2015, Mandrake was co-writer and editor on award-winning director Jen Senko's documentary film, The Brainwashing of My Dad, narrated by Matthew Modine and starring Noam Chomsky, David Brock, Edward S. Herman, Frank Luntz, and many more. The documentary won several film awards, including The Webby Awards, Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival, and more. In 2017, she worked on romantic-comedy, Sam, with director Nicholas Brooks and legendary producer Mel Brooks, starring Morgan Fairchild and Stacy Keach. Also in 2017, she worked on psychological thriller, The Eyes with Good To Be Seen Films, starring Nicholas Turturro, Vincent Pastore (Sopranos). The "documentary-fairytale" movie she wrote and produced about her famed grandfather, Mandrake the Magician, was released in October of 2020. The film is set in black and white and “features Mandrake’s autobiographical writings, fictional interpretations and factual stories from family members, and reveals a few “ghosts of the past,” as Käla tells it.” Contemporary to the 1930s comic superhero of the same name, Mandrake the Magician began his career in Vaudeville and went on to perform and invent magic acts on the road with his two wives, Princess Narda (circa 1930s) and then Miss Velvet (circa 1940s) over the course of fifty years. The film was initiated as an investigation into the magician’s career, specifically the still-unsolved mystery as to the connection between the man and the comic book character of the same name and the same time period. Mandrake the Magician personally knew the creators of the comic character, writer Lee Falk and cartoonist Phil Davis , and they shared the same agent, The William Morris Agency, , according to the documentary. Mandrake told reporter Tom Zillich, “it seems the main purpose of his silence and secrecy was to ignite the imagination.” In 2022, she wrote and directed the two-part movie adaptation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s NY Times Best Seller book, "The Real Anthony Fauci" by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. The Epoch Times reported that it was a"compelling and harrowing cinematic adaptation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s bestseller, written and directed by Kala Mandrake" and that it "may turn out to be the film of our time.” Investigative journalist Celia Farber stated it is an"astonishing documentary written by Kala Mandrake," and The Rio Times wrote that Kennedy’s best seller "has been turned into a spellbinding documentary film by Kala Mandrake."

External links

• Käla Mandrake on IMDb
• Official website

This article "Käla Mandrake" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Käla Mandrake. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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