IT’S my pleasure as director of the JET Production of WINNOWING -- https://winnowing.yolasite.com -- to announce the creation of a director’s cut. This novel “soft” neo-noir film features Setsuko Tsuchiya in her debut lead actress role with actor-companion Daniel S. Janik, together playing eight roles each from a screenplay by the incomparable author/screenwriter William Maltese. Incorporating storylines from six Maltese books, WINNOWING brings diversity to a new level and, I believe,...

AS films progress through the usual year or so of post-production, the work involved in editing, scoring, captioning, creating distribution formats (like DVDs, BluRays and streaming) and making plans for the “official” release, is often so intense, this period often becomes one of relative public silence. Not so with WINNNOWING. I regularly post about the film’s progress on my personal blog, WordPress, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram accounts, summarized at https://janik.yolasite.com/w...

FIRST, let me explain that living in Hawaii, we’re always alert to tropical hurricanes, like Calvin, that like to visit our islands this time of year through Christmas. Calvin is about halfway here and so far has been growing in intensity achieving Category Two status yesterday.

WINNOWING — https://winnowing.yolasite.com — on the other hand is a JET Progress film production, currently in post-production. What they have in common is that as WINNOWING progresses through the film festival...

MY opinions expressed are typically those of but one of 336 million individual Americans spanning an increasingly disparate spectrum of opinions. But being a SAG actor, the SAG-AFTRA actors’ strike, in fact, affects me not only as an inveterate film enthusiast, but also as an actor AND filmmaker.

As an actor — https://janik.yolasite.com/actor.php — it means a cessation of work in a field of endeavor not only my livelihood but my passion. Acting opportunities are rarely tightly consecut...

WINNOWING, a JET Progress production based on the screenplay of the same name by William Maltese, is a vignette of short scripts from previously published William Maltese books, which two actors must persevere reading as part of a final audition for a “Really Big Film.” A mystery-drama, the six scripts include:

“House of the Brave Bulls” in which prize bulls raised and trained for the bullfights in Madrid suddenly go missing.

“Assignment: Grey Area” in which a private investigato...