MENTORS & PROTEGES

The Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative, held every two years, was established in 2002 “to seek out young artists of extraordinary potential and provide them with a year of individual guidance and instruction from recognized masters.”

“The programme fills a void in arts philanthropy by providing unprecedented corporate funding of individual artists,” says Patrick Heiniger, president and CEO of Rolex SA, headquartered in Geneva. “We believe that no other company is supporting individual artists in such a systematic way, internationally, or across such a broad spectrum of artistic areas.”

Focusing on artist-proteges “whose talent does not match the opportunities [otherwise] afforded them,” the Initiative selects candidates working in multiple disciplines, such as Dance, Literature, Music, Theater and Visual Arts.

This year, the Initiative has added Film to the mix: Indian director Mira Nair, who referred to Rolex as “corporate Medicis” at a press conference earlier this week, was invited to be the Initiative’s first Film Mentor. (She had previously served on its Advisory Board.)

Nair, in turn, selected Thai filmmaker Aditya Assarat (pictured right, with Nair) as her protege.

Assarat — who is currently a Fellow at the Sundance Institute Filmmakers and Screenwriters Labs, and was also named this week as one of the Institute’s first Annenberg Film Fellows — will meet with Nair periodically over the next year as she prepares for Focus Features’ release this September of her adaptation of Thackeray’s classic Vanity Fair, starring Reese Witherspoon.

Nair is also developing adaptations of Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul, for HBO, and Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist, and she is scheduled to contribute a segment to the forthcoming 20-part “collective feature,” Paris, je t’aime, which celebrates the plurality of cinema in Paris, the mythic city of Love.

Together with her production company, Mirabai Films, Nair plans to launch Maisha — from the Swahili word for “zest for life” — an annual filmmaker’s lab to be held near her home in Kampala, Ugand, in spring 2005. Earlier this year, Mirabai Films also partnered with Bala Entertainment International to establish the International Bhenji Brigade, a film production company that will develop and produce Asian cinema for the global marketplace.

Nair also serves as Guest Director at this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, June 17-26, where she will introduce a 3-film showcase that includes Jane Campion’s An Angel At My Table (1990), Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa (1957), and Emir Kusterica’s Time of the Gypsies (1988).

Originally from Bangkok, Thailand, Aditya Assarat, 32, who received a Master’s degree from USC in Los Angeles in 2000, has written and directed several short films, including Motorcycle (2000), and a feature-length documentary, Raw Velvet (2002), about the Thai rock band PRU. He is currently completing a second feature documentary, Three Friends, and developing his first dramatic feature Hi-So, a semi-autobiographical film about a young Thai student who has a love affair while studying abroad before finally returning to Bangkok.

Assarat will receive a $25,000 stipend from Rolex, one of the world’s foremost watchmakers, which will also reimburse his travel expenses to meet with Nair throughout the coming year. Each Mentor in the Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative receives a cash honorarium of $50,000.

Participants in the Sundance Institute’s Annenberg Film Fellows Program receive extended support over a two-year period to facilitate the creation of their current projects.