Thanks to actress Yolonda Ross for alerting us to this.

If I can just take this moment to say that I love it when talent (actors, directors, writers etc) take the initiative and keep us informed of any and all projects they are working on. It makes our job a lot easier, and ensures that readers are getting the info immediately and correctly. I don't have to go digging to find out what this actor is up to, or that writer is writing, or that director is shooting. Let us know! We all benefit from that I think.

But back to Ms Ross… 🙂

If you're not already familiar Ms Ross' work, you'll be soon enough. We've already profiled a few of her projects. She's appeared both in film and TV over the last decade, from a reoccurring role in HBO's acclaimed series Treme, to, most recently, Victoria Mahoney's impressive feature film debut Yelling To The Sky, which I've seen and later reviewed enthusiastically on this site.

Up next, we'll see her alongside Wendell Pierce of The Wire fame, in the indie drama titled, Four, an adaptation on an off-Broadway play by Christopher Shinn, directed by Joshua Sanchez. As noted in a recent post, that film will make its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival next month, and S&A will be there for your first look at the film.

She'll also appear in HBO's Phil Spector project, which stars Al Pacino in the title role. David Mamet is directing.

This morning, Yolonda alerted me to this new project from indie film maestro John Sayles, titled Go For Sisters, which she's starring in.

The details from Sayles' website read:

GO FOR SISTERS, a film written and directed by John Sayles, will shoot this summer in Los Angeles, Calexico, Mexicali and Tijuana. The director’s 18th feature will star Edward James Olmos, LisaGay Hamilton, Yolonda Ross and Hector Elizondo. The plot concerns two friends, Bernice and Fontayne, who grow up so close they ‘go for sisters’, but then lose track of each other for twenty years. They are reunited when Bernice is assigned as the parole officer for Fontayne, who is fresh out of prison and fighting heroin addiction. But Bernice has an even more threatening problem. With a budget well under a million dollars and four weeks to shoot, this will be a return to the guerilla style of filmmaking familiar to Sayles from his early 80’s films Return of the Secaucus Seven, Lianna and Brother from Another Planet. Production will begin in mid-July.

I've been a fan of John Sayles since Brother From Another Planet. I haven't loved every film, but I dig his unwavering indie spirit. He came from the same *school* as directors like Martin Scorcese and James Cameron – working early in their careers with Roger Corman.

Sayles penned a few screenplays for Corman in the late 1970s/early 1980s, and it's primarily through screenwriting Sayles has been able to survive – writing scripts (or sometimes rewriting) for higher-budgeted studios pictures, and using the money earned from those gigs to help fund his low-budget directorial efforts – films that often tell stories centered around the *under-represented* and marginalized, from all walks of life.

If anything, Go For Sisters should be a well-acted drama (as Sayles films tend to be) with this cast of actors. And I should say that it'll be nice to see LisaGay Hamilton on screen in a starring role. She also worked with Sayles in 2007's Honeydripper. 

I'll be watching the progress of this.