S a y i n g  Y e s  Q u i c k l y

Our lives are made of stories told over countless cups of coffee, broadcast and projected onto screens, passed hand-to-hand on the printed page, and whispered in bed. We all eagerly listen to the stories of others and relish telling our own. In their simplicity and grandeur, humor and drama, stories occupy the very heart of what it means to be human.

Russell Martin and his colleagues create imaginative, character-based stories for film, television, print, and new media—stories that get people talking, true stories that reflect the complexities of individual lives and imagined stories that mine essential elements of our shared humanity.

N e w s

 Beautiful Faces was enthusiatically received at its Los Angeles premiere at the Hola Mexico Film Festival on May 18 at the Regal Cinemas at L.A. Live.. The festival, which takes place in both Los Angeles and Sydney, showcases what its organizers believe is the best Mexican cinema of the past year. This year’s festival includes thirteen features and six documentaries, and we were delighted to be in such great company.

 Beautiful Faces is a "splendid documentary" writes columnist Federico Reyes Heroles in Reforma, Mexico's leading newspaper.

 Beautiful Faces had its world premiere at the distinguished Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in October. The film's European premiere took place during the same week at the acclaimed Bergen International Film Festival in Norway, and the Ojai Film Festival in California hosted its West Coast premiere in October as well.

   Picasso's War has been published in a new e-book edition by Hol Arts Books. It can be read on iPads, Kindles, Nooks, and all other e-reading devices. The Los Angeles Times says, "Martin deftly weaves the story of [Picasso's 'Guernica'] into the background of the rise of fascism and the course of the Spanish war. . . His book is beguiling . . . even in tone, illuminating, deft, indeed a painterly little book."

Two Spirits has been nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary among films broadcast on American television during 2011. The GLAAD Media Awards recognize and honor media for their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives.

 Beautiful Faces is being produced in association with the UNESCO Chair in Bio-Ethics and Human Rights. Executive Director Dr. Fernando Lorenzo Rego, based in Rome, calls the film "a great documentary . . . Seeing this film is one of the most significant human and spiritual experiences I've had in recent years. What pride it gave me in being a doctor, what pride to find work like this in Mexico . . . what pride I found in the hope of these families, and in these children who remind us of the grandeur of the human being created by God."

 Two Spirits won the Audience Award for the 2010-2011 season of the PBS series "Independent Lens," selected by viewers as their favorite among the twenty films broadcast during the season. The film was screened nearly fifteen hundred times by 140 PBS stations across the United States in June 2011.

.

T h e   N a m e

The name“Say Yes Quickly” comes from a poem by Jelaluddin Rumi, the great Sufi mystic who lived in the thirteenth century. The poem affirms that it’s possible to touch the lives of “people you don’t know and have never seen.” And we love to say yes quickly ourselves when we're entertained, moved, or impassioned by the creative work of others.

Russell and his colleagues at Say Yes Quickly are based in Ojai, California, near Los Angeles, and can be reached by telephone at 805.500.5490 or by
e-mail at russell [AT] SYQproductions.net.