All Screen articles in 5 December 2003
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Indie consolidation continues: ContentFilm merges with Winchester
Ed Pressman and JohnSchimidt's three year-old ContentFilm has completed a reverse merger with theAIM-listed UK film outfit Winchester Entertainment which gives the US companymajority ownership and operational control of the UK production and distributionand international sales operation.Pressman and Schmidt will bejoint CEOs of the combined company, while Jamie Carmichael, who ...
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GERMANY, AUSTRIA, SWITZ Prod Lists - Dec 1 2003
AUSTRIA - December 1IN PRE-PRODUCTIONCRASH TEST DUMMIES(Amour Fou Filmproduktion) Co-prod: Catpics Co-productions (Switz). Backers: OFI, ORF, Filmfonds Wien. A Romanian couple are stranded in Vienna without any money, drift apart and have both changed when they are finally reunited. Prods: Gabriele Kranzelbinder, Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu. Dir/scr: Joerg Kalt. DoP: Eva Testor. ...
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First-time directors line up for autumn shoots
For full current listings click here A host of projects by first-time directors went before the camera this autumn. For a start, Tatiana Brandrup has just returned from three weeks of shooting in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi for her feature debut Caucasian Business (Kaukasischer Coup) with Italian For ...
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Cat beats Mansion by a whisker
Universal's The Cat InThe Hat stayed top by a whisker overthe holiday weekend, adding an estimated $25.6m for $77m in its second weekwhile Buena Vista's The Haunted Mansion opened second on $25.3m.Three other openers gracedthe top ten with varying degrees of success as the top 12 films combined forthe second ...
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GSC beefs up Malaysian multiplex presence
Malaysia's film distributor and exhibitor GSC is adding a second cinema outlet on the island of Penang with the launch of a $4.7m (RM18m) 12-screen multiplex on 11 December. The new cinema is sited at Gurney Plaza shopping mall with more than 1,800 seats, making it the largest cinema in ...
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BELGIUM
While the Belgian chart was dominated by new openers Finding Nemo and Master And Commander another, less internationally well received, opener made an impression further down the chart.The now infamous Gigli, recently voted the second worst film of all time by members of the Yahoo! My Movies website, landed in ...
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Berlinale unveils Competition five
Romauld Karmakar, Ron Howard, Annette K. Olesen, Vinko Bresan and Manuel Gutierrez Aragon have seen their latest films chosen by The Berlinale to play in its official Competition - a full two months before the festival starts (5-15 Feb, 2004).The initial five films, which run the gamut from tragic love ...
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Rebic's Donau, Duna... secures Sundance berth
Goran Rebic's waterborne road movie Donau, Duna, Dunaj, Dunav, Dunarea has been invited to screen in the World Cinema section of next year's Sundance Film Festival (Jan 15-25).Starring Otto Sander and Robert Stadlober, the co-production by Austria's Lotus Film and Wega Film has previously been shown at San Sebastian and ...
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Checkpoint walks off with top IDFA prize
Israeli director Yoav Shamir has won this year's $15,000 (Eu12,500) Joris Ivens Award at the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA) for his documentary film Checkpoint.The competition jury, led by German film-maker Monika Treut, also awarded a special jury prize to Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott's The Corporation.Meanwhile, Erik Gandini's ...
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Sundance reflects a new cinema of discomfort
The Sundance Film Festival,the film calendar's official discovery venue for US independent films, todayunveiled the dramatic and documentary competition lineups for its 2004 event(Jan 15 to 25) today, as well as the titles in the American Spectrum section. Several film-makers who havefilms in dramatic competition are already well-known in Sundance ...
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Lanzarote wraps with flurry of deals
The Spanish Film Screenings of Lanzarote (Nov 27-29) closed its fifth annual edition on Saturday with general consensus that the event has consolidated as an important concentrated showcase of Spanish cinema for buyers from Europe and Latin America.Despite the presence of almost a third fewer buyers this year, 60 in ...
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France's Vladimir Perisic wins Festival of Film Schools' prize
Vladimir Perisic of France's FEMIS won the VFF Young Talent Award for his 31-minute short Dremano Oko at this year's International Festival of the Film Schools in Munich (November 27-30).The other awards included: the Student Camera Award for Dutch DoP Martijn van Broekhuizen's cinematography on Jiska Rickels' Days Under (NFTA); ...
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NETHERLANDS
Life at sea proved attractive in the Netherlands last weekend as hit animated film Finding Nemo and seafaring adventure Master And Commander all but drowned local family title Kees De Jongen.Washing up in eighth place for UIP, Andre van Duren's film about the life of a Dutch boy in ...
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Universal celebrates $15.4m gross for Love Actually
Universal's Love Actually grossed an estimated $15.4m through UIP from 2,300sites in 18 countries over the weekend to raise its international cumulativetotal to $48.7m.The romantic comedy stayedtop in its second week in the UK, adding $8.4m from 477 sites and dropping 11%including previews (25% excluding) for a magnificent $25.9m running ...
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AFMA hires two PR agencies to up policy work in 2004
AFMA, the tradebody that runs the AFM and represents 170 independent producers anddistributors worldwide, has hired public relations firms The Lippin Group andPodestaMattoon.The moveestablishes a bi-coastal entertainment and policy communications network forAFMA, which is preparing to go head-to-head with embattled MIFED organizerswhen it launches an AFM market in November 2004.Entertainment ...
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CTFDI opens Bad Boys II top in Japan, SWAT top in Australia
Entering the final stretch of an international campaign that beganin July, the action sequel Bad Boys 2 opened top in its final market of Japan at the weekend onan estimated $3.5m.Executives at ColumbiaTriStar Film Distributors International (CTFDI) expect the film to prosper inJapan going into the holiday season and in ...
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Hubert Bals Fund distributes Euros 467,000 to 28 projects
Twenty-eight projects from non-Western filmmakers are to receive a total of Euros 467,000 in grants from the International Film Festival Rotterdam's (IFFR) Hubert Bals Fund (HBF), as was decided during the fund's autumn selection round. The HBF provides individual grants to support either script development, post-production or distribution in the ...
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Stephen Fry awards£10,000 Oscar Moore screen-writing prize
The £10,000 Oscar Moore Screen-writing prize for 2003 has been awarded to Ben Gooder and Philip Greenacre for: A Fine Line - the gripping true story of the rise and fall of Eric Hebborn and his career as an expert art forgerThe Oscar Moore Foundation was set up in 1996, ...
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Korean film wins main Mannheim-Heidelberg award
Korean filmmaker Eo Il-seon's first full-length feature, the quietly poetic melodrama Plastic Tree won the Main Award of Mannheim-Heidelberg at this year's International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg (20-29 November)..The International Jury gave its Special Prize to Sweden's Daniel Lind Lagerloef for his bizarrely comic and moving love story Miffo, while the ...
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FFA backs seven features in latest funding round
New features by Helmut Dietl, Marco Kreuzpaintner and Didi Danquart are among seven projects which received Euros 2.9m from the German Federal Film Board (FFA) in its latest round of funding.The largest sum - Euros 700,000 - was awarded to Dietl's melodramatic comedy update of the story of Orpheus and ...