Before there was Little Ashes, director Paul Morrison had dedicated and contributed his talents to other notable projects. As you can read in his biography, under "filmmakers", his directorial debut, Soloman & Gaenor won much critical acclaim. It even was nominated for an Academy Award. In 2003, Morrison wrote and directed his next sensation, Wondrous Oblivious, which went on to win Boston's Jewish Film Festival's Audience Award.

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Set in working-class London at the dawn of the 1960s, "Wondrous Oblivion" filters the era's cultural clashes through the starry eyes of a young Jewish boy.

Although his parents - a middle-aged tailor and his young, pretty wife - fled to England to escape the Nazis, 11-year-old David Wiseman (Sam Smith) seems to have been raised in a bubble. Obsessed with cricket, and apparently blind to all else, David is hopelessly outmatched at his posh public school and channels his energies into swapping trading cards of his favorite players.

A man at his father's shop pronounces his hard-nosed bargaining tactics "very Jewish," but David seems too thrilled by his new acquisitions to notice the slur. His obliviousness is wondrous indeed, and perhaps a touch implausible.

The Wisemans are regarded skeptically by their native-born neighbors, at least until an even greater anomaly moves in next door: a family of Jamaican immigrants, headed by Delroy Lindo's booming patriarch, Dennis Samuels. Suddenly, David's mother is a "good English woman," one who might intercede with the new neighbors' Jewish landlord and have them oh-so-delicately pushed out of the neighborhood.

The Los Angeles Times has a new article with an interview from Little Ashes director, Paul Morrison. In the interview, Morrison talks about casting actor Robert Pattinson as Salvador Dali and the intimate scenes illustrated in the film. Here's a taste:

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Paul Morrison, the director of "Little Ashes," a film about the strange, complex and forbidden love between Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca and surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, talks about casting "Twilight" hero Robert Pattinson in the period piece.

At the time, Pattinson was just another undiscovered young British actor (he'd done "Harry Potter"), and little did Morrison know that this young man would draw unparalleled attention to this small film, which opens May 8.

Paul Morrison: I love the fact that an audience is going to be drawn to the film, partly through Rob, that wouldn't otherwise get to this kind of movie. We played the Belfast Film Festival last week and there were quite a few of Rob's fans there, not the majority by any means, and they loved it and they really took to it, so it's great that kids will be reached by the movie.

Dish Rag: Playing Salvador Dalí is a daunting role for a young actor.

PM: Yeah, I don't think Rob realized what he was getting into when he agreed to do it, but he really worked hard at it, he really grappled with it, and I think he's done something very extraordinary. It's so difficult to do, because you have to tread light all the time between playing Dalí as a young lovable young man, which he was, and suggesting the kind of pastiche of himself that he became in later life, that he presented to the public in later life, and that's a very tall order, and I think Rob pulled it off.

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To read the entire article, you can do so at the Los Angeles Times website.

The Examiner has revealed a new interview from Little Ashes producer, Carlo Dusi. In the interview, Dusi speaks about his receipe for choosing projects, his next endeavor, and the Little Ashes cast. Below is a sampling:

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Carlo Dusi's experience in working on Little Ashes, which will be released on May 8, 2009, was "[i]n one word, magical." The project was not without "all of the difficulties, last-minute panic situations and emergencies that we have come to expect during the production process, but there was never a moment during the making of the film when the core creative team did not feel that we were making some very special, important, and that deserved being brought to the public."

Says Dusi, "we all got to spend several weeks together in Barcelona, which is a magical place in itself, and that the mix of personalities between us and with our cast and crew was extremely well-balanced all helped to leave us with wonderful memories of the production and post-production process, and our friendships have all been strengthened by this as a result, which is a real testament to the positive experiences we have all shared - as I can assure you that most of the time within a context as fraught as the production of a film this is not the case...."

After Little Ashes, Carlo Dusi’s next project will be The Absinthe Drinkers, with director John Charles Jopson, Twilight star Peter Facinelli, and Ondine star Alicja Bachleda. When asked what brought him to The Absinthe Drinkers, Dusi said that by the time he met writer and director John Charles Jopson, he “had already co-produced a film about Rembrandt (Nightwatching) and had shot Little Ashes, and also had another film about a painter in development (Charlotte, about Berlin-born WWII painter Charlotte Solomon, which is also to be directed by [Little Ashes director] Paul Morrison), so I had quietly promised myself not to deal with more period films about art for a while … but, of course, when a common friend introduced me to John, and I read the screenplay to The Absinthe Drinkers, John’s approach to the material was so different from anything else I had ever worked on previously, and his characters and story so modern and relevant, that I had no choice but to overturn my prior reservations.”

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A blog titled Obliquity65 has posted a project spotlight on Little Ashes. The blog's showcase of Little Ashes is rather well written and offers up several fascinating facts. In addition to providing a synopsis of the film, the spotlight also comprises of a historical reference of the characters, short biographies of the cast and crew, photo stills from the film, as well as production notes and a statement from the director, Paul Morrison. The following is a sample of the director's statement:

For me, ‘Little Ashes’ is first and foremost a love story, moving and tender. This is a forbidden love between two men that moves from a silent, aching longing to one incandescent and glorious moment of promise, only to end in rejection and disillusionment. Lorca’s love for Dalí gives the movie its shape, its dramatic spine. This is first and foremost an actor’s movie, truthful and beautiful, intimate and spare. The performances dominate.

The audience, with Lorca, will fall in love with the shy and brilliant Dalí, and be captivated by his sensitivity and vulnerability, hidden behind his poses and charades. We admire and fear for him in his outrageousness. Later, we fear more for Lorca as we realize that Dalí’s masks have become his face; that he has begun to believe in his act, and that Lorca and his love are becoming the victims of Dalí’s narcissism and ambition.

So this is also a film about integrity. Encouraged by Magdalena, Lorca keeps faith with his beliefs, his roots, his work, and- eventually- his sexuality. Dalí chooses notoriety and success and a fantastic kind of elitism over deeper values. Dalí became an early exponent and manipulative genius of the culture of celebrity. Philippa’s screenplay is thus both of its time and incontrovertibly fresh and modern.

We're always enthralled to see new features on Little Ashes! Be sure to visit Obliquity65 to read more!

Known as a talented drama and documentary filmmaker, Paul Morrison takes the helm again in his third feature film, Little Ashes.

In his first feature film, Solomon & Gaenor, Morrison served both as writer and director. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign film and won the Welsh BAFTA for best film in 2001. Starring Ioan Gruffudd and Nia Roberts, the film tells the story of a love affair between a Welsh woman and a Jewish immigrant in turn-of-the-century Wales. In a 2000 interview with indieWIRE, Morrison said he was inspired by research about anti-Semitic riots in Wales he discovered while completing his documentary A Sense of Belonging, which explored British Jewish identity. 

Morrison wrote and directed his second feature, Wonderous Oblivion, about themes of race and immigration, once again. The film follows a cricket-obsessed Jewish boy's unlikely friendship with a Jamaican immigrant family in London in the 1960s. Starring Delroy Lindo and Sam Smith, Wonderous Oblivion won awards including the audience award for best feature film at the Boston Jewish Film Festival in 2004. 

Prior to directing feature films, Morrison wrote and directed acclaimed documentaries including the British Broadcasting Corp.'s From Bitter Earth about drawings and paintings created in concentration camps and ghettos during World War II. His film, Like Other People won the Grierson Award for best U.K. documentary in 1973.

Morrison also worked extensively with Channel 4 on About Men, a study of masculinity, and A Change of Mind, which explored psychotherapy. He examined the art world in three half-hour art dramas for the channel:  Degas and Pissaro Fall Out, Lucrezia Borgia Reveals All and A Midsummer Night's Scream. Upcoming projects for the director include the film Charlotte, which examines the life of artist Charlotte Salomon, and Me & Joe, a story of a young, white, guitar-playing musician and his friendship with a black man who plays the blues.

Morrison, who grew up in North London, studied at Cambridge and the Royal College of Art. The grandson of Russian anarchist Jewish refugees, he was a practicing psychotherapist and told indieWIRE he likes to explore the extremes of emotion in his films.

For Philippa Goslett, Little Ashes is her first shot as writer and co-producer of a feature film.  Her outline of Little Ashes won the Euroscript Screen Story competition in 2000.  As the winner, Goslett shaped her story with three drafts, a full development program and received assistance from Euroscript promoting the project to the market.

Goslett has a background in theater production and later worked at Creative Artists Management where she assisted top agent Michael Wiggs with script reading and publicity.

In 1999, she formed her own production company, Wanton Muse, to develop screenplays with longtime friend Pikka Brassery.  Childhood friend Moira Campbell joined the team a year later.  The East End-based company's first project was an adaptation of Paradise Lost by novelist John Milton, though the ambitious project was later put on hold due to its size and scope. 

She also served as screenwriter for the 2005 short film Hampstead Heath - The Musical, and her second feature film, Holy Money was recently completed.