Describing lighting as “a character in the movie,” DP Autumn Durald Arkapaw said her approach to Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was about creating a “texture of grief throughout the film.”

She spoke about her work on the Marvel sequel – which takes place following the death of King T’Challa and additionally provides a moving remembrance of actor Chadwick Boseman, who played T’Challa in 2018’s Black Panther – at a screening of the film at the EnergaCamerimage cinematography film festival in Torun, Poland.

“As far as aesthetic choices for this, because of the importance for [Coogler] of grief, rebirth, migration, and all of this stuff that is so textural and delicate, we decided to de-tune and modify some T-series lenses,” she explained. “And then we used a wider lens for close-ups,” she says of her Panavision lens choices.”

“And then with lighting, I tend to light moodier, and it was embraced here, and Ryan’s very specific in what he wants out of a scene and how he captures the scene and where the cameras should be. For me, light shouldn’t fall everywhere. A character should be coming in and out of light, like it happens in real life,” Durald Arkapaw continued. “And there’s so much texture and drama to a face and if you just don’t shape it, then you don’t feel that emotion. So I think it was just very important for this story.”

She added that they drew inspiration from films Including Alien and Terminator 2: Judgement Day – movies that she described as having VFX with a naturalistic look. “They told you a lot in the darkness just as much as the light.”

The underwater scenes involved a lot of testing to get the desired look. “It was very important to Ryan to have a deep space movie underwater. Things are dark,” the cinematographer said. “It creates more tension, they’re textural, there’s a lot of turbidity, the clarity’s off. When you make a decision like that, that’s brave, everyone has to be on the same page. So we shot everything underwater that we could so we had a reference, and we also shot it dry-for-wet and they took both of those and were able to make something that was very beautiful and felt real – as real as it could with people walking and talking underwater. That was very important to Ryan from the beginning.”

Durald Arkapaw also spoke of her director and the seriousness with which she took Wakanda Forever. This was her first collaboration with Coogler, though her second with Marvel (she was Emmy-nominated earlier this year for Disney+ series Loki). Citing the lengthy production schedule, she said, “We were shooting around 130 days, not originally scheduled like that. … You have to want to shoot this type of movie for your director and the people around you. And [Coogler’s] someone that I would do that for in a heartbeat. And he’s a great leader.

“This film is so important culturally and to so many people and it’s not just another action film,” she added. “So you always have that in mind too. You’re paying homage to an individual but also a character that was beloved. And every person and head of department that came before me worked very hard on the first one. And so, game on, on the second one to do it justice. Also everyone loved [Boseman] on set as well, so you’re always reminded of that. So [this job] was very important for me.”

UPDATED, 5:06 PM: “He knew something was off when we were at the SAG Awards and the way Harvey looked at me,” Jennifer Siebel Newsom told defense lawyer Mark Werkman, jurors and onlookers Monday during her testimony at Harvey Weinstein’s Los Angeels rape trial, discussing her husband and then California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s knowledge by 2017 of the producer’s alleged assault of her several years beforehand.

“I dropped hints along the way,” California’s First Partner added in what was often emotional, tearful and graphic testimony.

Scrutinized by Werkman about when and how she informed Newsom of the alleged rape by Weinstein in his suite at the Peninsula Hotel more than 17 years ago, Siebel Newsom was overcome by sobs at several points during her time on the stand. Centering on the political connections of frequent big-bucks contributor Weinstein over the decades to various high-profile Democrats, the defense lawyer remained oblivious to the witness’ anguish. “Well, is that just politics, that you just take money from someone who has done something despicable to your wife unless everybody finds out about it?” Werkman said in his cross-examination this afternoon.

Identified as Jane Doe #4 in Weinstein’s West Coast trial, Siebel Newsom revealed her true name last month ahead of her testimony in Judge Lisa Lench’s downtown courtroom. Pilloried on the stand today when the defense had its turn, Siebel Newsom is expected to be back for more testimony Tuesday in what could be the closing days of this trial.

With Weinstein facing almost a dozen sex-crimes charges and looking at 140 years maximum behind bars if found guilty, sources on both sides have expressed that Siebel Newsom’s testimony could prove pivotal in the case.

Earlier in the day, after initially returning from the lunch break, the witness described in vivid detail going to meet Weinstein in the Beverly Hills hotel when she was a young and unmarried filmmaker/actress charmed by the attention the then-mogul gave her. “I was confused,” Siebel Newsom explained when she was contacted suddenly by a Weinstein assistant and told their meeting would be in the producer’s suite. “I was a little hesitant. I was expecting to meet him where the noise and the buzz was and there was all this conversation. I was just confused, and I didn’t know what to do.”

Let into Weinstein’s “opulent” suite by an assistant, Siebel Newsom stated how things quickly took a turn for the worse and the deadly. Called to join Weinstein in the bathroom, she found him masturbating. Overcome and admitting she found some memories of the incident “confusing,” the witness told Deputy DA Marlene Martinez and the court how Weinstein explained what was happening to her. “He was asserting himself and tried to tell me that he, he mentioned several actresses names, he tried to tell me that this was the industry, and in a way like threaten me.”

Allegedly hauling her into the suite’s main bedroom, Weinstein began assaulting her again, putting his fingers inside her, the witness said. 

“He knows this is not normal, he knows this is not consent,” Siebel Newsom asserted in a loud voice with Weinstein sitting mere feet away at the defense table with his lawyers.

“I could tell he just needed, he was so determined, just so scary, just all about him and his pleasure, his need for satisfaction, so I just did it to make it stop,” she added of Weinstein, who tried putting his “weird and messed up” penis inside her and having non-consensual sex with her and then performing forced cunnilingus on her. “Oh, I just made some noises to get him to ejaculate faster,” Siebel Newsom said of then masturbating Weinstein.

“There was silence on my part,” Siebel Newsom told the court after Weinstein ejaculated. “I just remember not having words. I just wanted to get the f*ck out of there, pardon my language,” she said, crying again.

“I just remember being shocked by everything,” Siebel Newsom said of the small talk Weinstein made afterwards and her leaving his suite. “It was like the Twilight Zone, I just walked down this hallway it felt like forever,” she noted. “It was like an out-of-body experience. I just remember I got my car at the valet.”

Siebel Newsom admitted on the stand that she did not go to police after the incident, a decision she indicated was made in part because of a bad experience she had with law enforcement after her sibling’s death years before. She also admitted she did have personal and political contact with Weinstein in the years since the alleged assault – a fact the defense will surely continue to emphasize in questioning Tuesday.

PREVIOUSLY, 12:27 PM: “He was really focused on telling me I was special, and I was different,” Jennifer Siebel Newsom told a downtown Los Angeles jury Monday of her first meeting with Harvey Weinstein.

“He was like the kingmaker, he was the top of the industry,” she said on the stand about encountering Weinstein in 2005 at the Toronto Film Festival. “I was a working actress, I had little roles, guest-starring roles on TV shows and films, and I was working on some short films, I’d been in two features … but they were small roles.”

Expected to continue her testimony this afternoon, Siebel Newsom broke down in tears at one point this morning when asked to point out Weinstein in the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center courtroom. With two security guards in the front row of Judge Lisa Lench’s courtroom, Siebel Newsom took the stand to questions from Deputy L.A. County D.A. Marlene Martinez after several other witness had testified Monday.

Having first revealed in late 2017 the interaction she had with Weinstein years beforehand, Siebel Newsom went public via her lawyer on October 10 that she was Jane Doe #4 in the incarcerated producer’s L.A. trial. “Like many other women, my client was sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein at a purported business meeting that turned out to be a trap,” attorney Elizabeth Fegan said in a statement. “She intends to testify at his trial in order to seek some measure of justice for survivors, and as part of her life’s work to improve the lives of women.”

Siebel Newsom’s testimony comes after her husband, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, widely seen as a potential candidate for U.S. president at some point, was easily reelected last week.

Weinstein is facing grand jury indictments of four counts of rape, four counts of forcible oral copulation, one count of sexual penetration by use of force, plus one count of sexual battery by restraint and sexual battery in incidents involving five women in L.A. County from 2004 to 2013. Sentenced to 23 years in prison by a Manhattan jury in March 2020 for multiple sex crimes, and now on appeal, the 70-year old Weinstein faces 140 years imprisonment if found guilty in L.A.

In his opening statement in the trial last month, Weinstein lawyer Mark Werkman dismissed the Siebel Newsom, the First Partner of California, as no more than “just another bimbo who slept with Harvey Weinstein to get ahead in Hollywood” if she hadn’t married now-Gov. Newsom. As testimony from other Jane Does and witness commenced last month in the West Coast trial, information appeared in the press of contributions Weinstein made to Newsom’s various campaigns over the years, as well as encounters one-time filmmaker and actress Siebel Newsom — who married Newsom in 2008 when he was mayor of San Francisco — and her husband had with Weinstein after the alleged assault in late 2004-early 2005 in L.A.

In late October, Lench curtailed the defense’s ability to question Siebel Newsom about her 2007 communication with Weinstein over an affair her then-boyfriend Newsom had with a campaign aide’s spouse. The judge also limited the prosecution’s reach to ask about texts Siebel Newsom had with Louisette Geiss in 2015 about Weinstein and comments about former First Daughter Malia Obama’s internship at the Weinstein Co. in early 2017.

Weinstein’s trial is expected to run until the end of the month before the case goes to the jury.

Recently graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris, French painter Apolonia Sokol heads to the U.S. in pursuit of the bigger picture. She finds it, after a fashion, as a wealthy collector commissions her to churn out 10 canvases a month. It’s an industrial approach to art that docmaker Lea Glob views skeptically: “Why only buy the art when it’s so much cheaper to buy the artist?” she asks. In a less cynical way, however, Glob’s unusual, compelling new film “Apolonia, Apolonia” invests grandly in Sokol herself, making the artist a kind of living installation that Glob’s camera intimately observes over the course of 13 years. Sokol’s paintings, slightly distorted large-scale portraits of human subjects in eerie states of repose, are striking, but never quite as intriguing as their restless, endlessly self-doubting creator.

As a portrait of the artist as a young woman, then, “Apolonia, Apolonia” is already layered and substantial, pondering as it does matters of individual creative principle, the predominantly patriarchal functions of critique and patronage and the economic reality of millennial bohemianism in its leisurely but gradually rewarding two-hour running time. But Glob, the Danish director who had a sizeable 2015 festival hit with the similarly ambitious, artistry-centered “Olmo and the Seagull,” complicates matters further still, weaving her own experience as a creator, feminist and, finally, mother into her subject’s defiant trajectory. Some might find the inward focus of the film’s concluding stages an indulgence too far, but this IDFA competition entry — produced for HBO Max in Europe — remains an impressively idiosyncratic, far-reaching work, assured of further festival play and specialist arthouse attention.

If Sokol is sometimes unconfident regarding her own artist’s gaze, she is never shy in the face of a camera. Before Glob’s consistently affectionate lens, she’ll either vamp gleefully or settle into her most natural, unfiltered self, never quite forgetting she’s being watched but fully at ease with the attention. That makes her an ideal focal point for a documentary, and you can see why Glob, by her own onscreen admission, never quite knew when to put the camera down, to call time on a personal narrative that never reaches a neat resolution or resting point. (Why would it? Sokol isn’t yet 35.) And if she ultimately turned her talents toward visual art, Sokol is a born performer too: The daughter of two actors, she was raised in the scruffy independent Paris theater that, as Glob first encounters her in 2009, she still calls home.

While she completes her studies in the contrastingly posh Beaux-Arts, Sokol turns the theater into a makeshift hostel and community hub for a wide variety of friends, fellow artists and adrift activists — one of whom, asylum-seeking Ukrainian feminist Oksana Shachko, becomes the closest of friends with the seemingly polysexual Sokol, their relationship giving this sprawling film its hefty emotional anchor. Sokol’s art thrives off the diversity and energy of her highly sociable home life; when the theater is eventually repossessed and she’s forced to share a small apartment with her mother and Oksana, her work in turn appears to lose some of that dynamism. She graduates, though not with distinction, and is stung by her professors’ remarks that her paintings are less interesting than her personality. 

They wouldn’t tell a male student that, she fumes, probably correctly. Yet it does seem that her work is missing some of her exuberantly chaotic approach to life, and “Apolonia, Apolonia” enters its most tense, fascinating phase as she seeks that X-factor far from home — first in New York and then in Los Angeles, where she catches the eye of controversial South African super-collector Stefan Simchowitz (dubbed the art world’s “patron Satan” by the New York Times), who puts her to work with little regard for her process, and is cool in his appreciation of the results. For the first time, Sokol is shown a potentially prolific career path as an artist. Of course, it all but freezes up her inspiration.

What does she want? Determined to forge her own path, and vocally averse to starting a family, Sokol remains unsure as she charges into her thirties, hopping from country to country before settling, atb least for a time, on home again. Watching her, however, appears to unlock the filmmaker’s own personal and artistic insecurities, as the doc’s focus shifts toward Glob’s difficult pregnancy, and her adjusted priorities in its wake. Gazing upon great art often clears our minds, sharpens our thinking and invites new ideas in; in “Apolonia, Apolonia,” tracing the long-term push-pull of someone else’s artistic process appears to do the same for the woman behind the camera.

David Beckham has already faced a considerable amount backlash for accepting £10 million ($11.7 million ) to be an ambassador for the controversial Qatar 2022 World Cup, which kicks off in Doha on Nov. 20. But the matter has now amassed further attention thanks to Brit comic and TV host Joe Lycett.

Lycett — well-known in the U.K. for taking on political issues — posted a video on Sunday saying that he would put £10,000 of his own money into a shredder if Beckham didn’t end his deal with Qatar.

Describing Beckham as a “gay icon” due to him being the first footballer to do photoshoots with gay magazines, speak openly about his gay fans, and marry a Spice Girl (“the gayest thing a human being can do”), Lycett noted that Qatar was voted one of the worst places in the world to be gay and a country where homosexuality was illegal, punishable by imprisonment and, in some case, death.

Lycett challenged Beckham to end his relationship with Qatar, and said he would donate the £10,000 ($11,700) to charities that support queer people in soccer. However, if he didn’t, he said at midday U.K. time on Sunday, Nov 20, just before the World Cup opening ceremony, he would throw the money into a shredder and stream it live on his website benderslikebeckham.com.

“Not just the money, but your status as a gay icon will be shredded,” he added.

Destroying legal tender is, of course, illegal in the U.K., a fact Lycett acknowledged.

“You’ll be forcing me to commit a crime,” he said. “But even then I reckon I’ll get off more lightly than I would if I got caught wanking off a lad in Doha.”