EXCLUSIVE: Mark Webber and Jennifer DeLia have partnered to launch Beyond Culture, an artist-led production banner, unveiling their initial slate.
Beyond Culture is billed as a company integrating film, art, music, technology and experience, which will champion uncompromising voices and stories that expand consciousness, provoke convention and transcend mediums. Built around a model that prioritizes creative ownership and greater financial control for artists, the company takes inspiration from the original United Artists, founded by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith in 1919 to give artists greater autonomy over their work.
The founding partners will celebrate the launch with a panel, live performance and reception taking place as part of the Speakers’ Summit Series at the 2026 Toronto Film Festival.
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Beyond Culture launches with a slate that includes Webber’s Figments of Freedom, executive produced by global recording artist Sia; DeLia’s Mary Pickford: Love Wild, produced by DeLia, Jack Cook, Julie Pacino and Nitsa Benchetrit; documentary series Painting in the Dark; and the company’s namesake series, Beyond Culture.
In Figments of Freedom, written, directed by and starring Webber, a Marine goes AWOL, burns his life to ash, and vanishes into America’s fractured heart. Haunted by war and chasing ghosts of himself, he drifts through a divided nation that might be the only mirror left to find himself. Currently in post, the film also stars Afia Fields, Eugenia Yuan and Winona LaDuke.
Mary Pickford: Love Wild is DeLia’s surrealist exploration of the life of pioneering actress, producer and United Artists co-founder Pickford. Sophie Kennedy Clark plays the title role, starring alongside Cary Elwes, Scott Haze, Balthazar Getty, Summer Phoenix, Fran Kranz, Mike Sirow, Adam Fergus, Luke Arnold, Allie McDonald, Jeroen van Koningsbrugge, Brionne Davis, Jane Stiles, Josephine de La Baume, Heath Freeman, and singer Angela McCluskey as Mary’s mother, Charlotte Pickford.
The Pickford project was shot by DP Dan Kneece, whose career included collaborations with David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino. Kneece passed away unexpectedly just five weeks after completing additional photography on the film; Freeman and McCluskey also passed away before its completion. Following a creative pause, the film has now entered its final stage of post-production.
Docuseries Painting in the Dark follows muralist Joel Bergner, aka Joel Artista, CEO and co-founder of Artolution, whose large-scale collaborative works span more than 30 countries across five continents. From refugee camps to prisons and underserved communities around the world, Artista uses collaborative art-making as a force for connection, expression and social transformation.
Beyond Culture is also currently developing a namesake series — a reality-documentary hybrid that takes artists and cultural figures beyond persona and into radical self-exploration. The inaugural journey, produced by Brody Baker and shot by Cameron Dunbar, follows Orange Is the New Black actor Taryn Manning alongside hosts DeLia and Taylor Olandt through a spiritual marathon of healing practices. Through tantra, breath, mantra and sweat, layers of identity are stripped away, revealing the human being beneath the public perception.
DeLia and Webber bring decades of combined experience across film, art and culture to their new company.
A director, producer and actor, DeLia’s credits include the films Billy Bates, Abracadabra and Aligned, as well as the Off-Broadway production Phoenix, starring Julia Stiles and James Wirt. She has also directed music videos for artists including Dr. John, Bobby Rush and Amadou & Mariam, created live experiences at Cannes, Berlin, TIFF, Sundance and New York Fashion Week, and founded Sovereignty Fest.
DeLia observed, “Artists are often asked to surrender some part of their vision in order to participate in the machinery around it. Beyond Culture is about imagining a different relationship between art and commerce, one where creators can remain sovereign, take meaningful risks and create work that has cultural and commercial power without losing the thing that made it alive in the first place.”
Webber, whose acting credits span more than 40 films, has worked with filmmakers including Jim Jarmusch, Todd Solondz, Lynn Shelton, Thomas Vinterberg, Lars von Trier, Edgar Wright and Gus Van Sant. As a writer-director, his films have screened at SXSW, Sundance and Tribeca.
“For me, the most meaningful work has always come from protecting the human impulse behind it,” Webber said. “Beyond Culture creates a space where artists can experiment, collaborate and create from a place of truth, rather than reverse-engineering their creativity around what a system thinks it knows how to sell.”
DeLia and Webber first collaborated on Webber’s feature directorial debut, Explicit Ills, with DeLia helping secure the film’s financing. The film went on to win the Audience Award for Narrative Feature and Best Cinematography at SXSW in 2008.
Beyond Culture’s launch event at TIFF will feature artists and collaborators from across its slate, including Senegalese-American singer Marieme, who will also perform. Additional participants include Eugenia Kuzmina (Noon), voice actor Karen Strassman, For Love filmmaker Matt Smiley, Narcos: Mexico actor Brionne Davis, Bergner, Olandt, Webber and DeLia.
