Producer Pharrell Williams To Give ‘Hidden Figures’ Concert At TIFF
Posted by Wilson Morales
August 18, 2016
The Toronto International Film Festival announced today an exclusive, TIFF Members-only first look at Theodore Melfi’s new feature film Hidden Figures during the Festival. On Saturday, September 10, 20th Century Fox will present exclusive footage of the film, a Q&A with Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Pharrell Williams, and the filmmakers, followed by a concert with Williams and friends on Festival Street for select TIFF Members.
“Toronto audiences will be the first to hear Pharrell’s new music for Hidden Figures, and they’ll see it performed live on Festival Street,” said Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director of the Toronto International Film Festival. “This film brings together an incredible array of talent. We’re beyond happy to be giving audiences a taste of it.”
“I am so honoured for the world to first see a part of Hidden Figures at TIFF where I was lucky enough to premiere my first ever feature, St. Vincent,” said Melfi. “TIFF has a very special place in my heart. Pharrell’s musical genius acumen takes the film to a different level.”
Festival Street returns to the Toronto International Film Festival for its third year. From September 8 to 11, King Street West between Peter and University Streets will be closed and transformed into a pedestrian paradise, free for all to enjoy.
The mathematician film stars Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and singer Janelle Monáe.
Also featured in the film are Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, Aldis Hodge, and Glen Powell.
Ted Melfi is the diretor of the film as well as a producer along with Peter Chernin and Jenno Topping through Chernin Entertainment; and Donna Gigliotti of Levantine Films. Grammy Award winner Pharrell Williams is also onboard as a producer and music composer.
Based on Margot Lee Shetterly book “Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race,” the film will focus on centers on Katherine Johnson (Henson), a brilliant African-American mathematician who, along with her colleagues Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) and Dorothy Vaughan (Spencer), served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in U.S. history — the momentous launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, and his safe return. The three women crossed all gender, race and professional lines while embarking on the mission.
Desperate to get ahead of the Russians, the nation’s space agency had hired the brainiest people it could find, among them Ms. Johnson, who, in 1937, graduated from college in West Virginia summa cum laude at 18. But, for years at the agency, women often worked in separate rooms from men, and the white women were segregated from the black women, who were known as “colored computers.” Ms. Johnson’s push to be heard by the men — her calculations, once they heeded her, proved invaluable — lies at the film’s narrative core.
Costner is set to play the head of the space program while Powell plays astronaut John Glenn, who was on the Friendship 7 mission in 1962 and became the first American to orbit the Earth.
“Hidden Figures” is set to hit theaters on January 13, 2017.
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