Looby’s short ‘Lollywood’ doc screens at Slamdance

TODD LOOBY’S short documentary Lollywood, about a teenage filmmaker and war orphan at Liberia Mission, Inc. screens Jan. 20 and 23 in the Slamdance Film Festival.

Looby’s narrative short Son of None, shot during the same trip to Liberia Mission, won a special jury award at Slamdance 2011.

Looby’s wife Monica Desmond is executive director of Franciscan Works, the parent organization of Liberia Mission.

Looby’s semiautobiographical narrative feature Be Good, about an independent filmmaker navigating new fatherhood, starring Sundance favorite Amy Seimetz and featuring Joe Swanberg, hits the fest circuit early in the year.

Looby is also adapting a screenplay based on Thomas Cahill’s nonfiction book A Saint on Death Row, about Texas inmate Dominique Green, whose case became a cause célèbre for international death penalty opponents including Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Devon MikolasWRITER/DIRECTOR DEVON MIKOLAS and director MARK VADIK (The Thirsting) are making the 70s-style revenge thriller House of the Witchdoctor, shooting late January and February. They describe the project as an homage to pictures like I Spit on Your Grave and Last House on the Left.

It’s about “two career criminals who go on a killing spree which eventually leads them to a small rural town where a group of graduate students are staying for a weekend. When they break into the Van Hooten residence to terrorize and kill the inhabitants, they discover the house is owned by a cult leader who turns the hunters into the hunted.”

Crew includes DP Hanuman Brown Eagle, co-producer Larry Skorniak, executive producer Chass DeMoss, FX artist Troy Holbrook, and production designer Tina Krause.

PRODUCER/STAR FAWZIA MIRZA (Jamie and Jessie Are Not Together) and director Ryan Logan are in production on the second season of their web series Kam Kardashian, about “the long-lost lesbian Kardashian sister who was cut off, kicked out, and left to fend for herself,” Mirza says.

“This sticky-fingered vixen loves whiskey and women, and most of all yearns to re-insert herself into the Kardashian krown by any means possible.”

The four-episode first season is on their YouTube channel. Season 2 is slated to run weekly from February through May. Amanda Clifford is DP.

Making New FriendsDIRECTOR ERIC RICHTER is three episodes into production of the monthly comedy web series Making New Friends, ­starring Patrick O’Rourke and Zack Mast of Peaches and Hot Sauce Productions, based on O’Rourke’s podcast and live improv show of the same name.

“The series follows podcast host Pat on absurd adventures with his friends in the homemade Kitchen Studios,” Richter says.

BOB HERCULES AND DAN CHACE’S documentary Perseverance: The Story of Billy Taylor, has its Chicago premiere in the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Stranger Than Fiction Documentary Festival, Jan. 4 at 8 p.m. and Jan. 5 at 5 p.m.

It’s about the University of Michigan football star’s journey through addiction and homelessness to recovery and the founding of a Detroit treatment center.  Taylor, Hercules and Chace will attend.