All articles by Geoffrey Macnab – Page 176
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News
Paul Trijbits joins Alison Owen's production company Ruby Films
Paul Trijbits, whose six-year stint as head of the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund ended last autumn, has joined Alison Owen's London-based Ruby Films. Full details of Tribijts' role at Ruby are yet to be confirmed, but it is expected that he will be active in acquiring and executive ...
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News
Dutch Film Fund explains details for $16.8m Matching Fund
As the Rotterdam film festival continues, local film-makers are seeing several signs of encouragement from the Dutch Film Fund. The fund has announced $1.26m (Euros 975,000) backing in three art-house features as well as unveiling details for its groundbreaking $16.8m (Euros 13m) Matching Fund. Dutch Film Fund director Toine Berbers ...
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News
Rome aims to lure 300 buyers to second Business Street event
The Rome Festival's industry event Business Street is looking to target buyers and sellers yet more aggressively. Speaking in Rotterdam, Sylvain Auzou, who runs Business Street with Diamara Parodi, has explained just how the market will be expanded further. The second festival is to run from October 18-27 (just a ...
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News
Klimt finally gets UK release
Raoul Ruiz's film Klimt, about the fin de siecle Austrian painter, is to be released in the UK in the summer by Soda Pictures. Two versions of the film are in circulation - a 129 minute director's cut and a shorter producer's version. After consulting with exhibitors, Soda has decided ...
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News
Negativ lines up shoots for Country Teacher and Protektor
Reflecting the recent upswing in Czech producers' fortunes, Prague-based independent production outfit Negativ has revealed further details of a bulging development slate. Negativ representatives have been in Rotterdam this week attending CineMart with new project Country Teacher by Bohdan Slama. The $1.7m feature, already supported by Pallas Film in German, ...
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News
Wide gets on board for controversial Belgian feature Ex Drummer
In one of the first pick-ups of this year's Rotterdam Tiger competition, French outfit Wide Management is to handle international sales on Koen Mortier's Ex Drummer. The news was confirmed on Sunday in Rotterdam, just prior to the film's world premiere. All territories are open, except for Benelux, which is ...
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News
DV8 plans multi-platform release for cell-phone feature
Jeremy Nathan and Joel Phiri's Johannesburg-based DV8 is planning a global, Bubble-style, multi-platform release for its new feature, SMS Sugar Man. 'We are busy putting in place all the distribution pipelines,' Nathan said of the plans to make Sugar Man available worldwide simultaneously on internet, mobile phones and DVD. 'We've ...
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Reviews
Ex Drummer
Dir: Koen Mortier. Bel. 2007. 101mins. The most controversial film to have emerged from Belgium since Man Bites Dog, Koen Mortier's Ex Drummer is an exercise in Flemish shock tactics. Adapted from a novel by Herman Brusselmans, the film strives hard to be as provocative as possible. Its tone varies ...
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Reviews
The Aerial (La Antena)
Dir: Esteban Sapir. Arg. 2007. 90mins.Esteban Sapir's second feature is an intriguing and beautifully-made oddity - a largely silent, black-and-white fantasy that seems inspired in equal measure by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, FW Murnau's The Last Laugh, 1920s surrealism and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Made for a reported budget of ...
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News
Rotterdam director bemoans lack of local films in festival
Where have the Dutch films gone' With 44 world premieres, the 36th International Film Festival Rotterdam is showcasing a wealth of new work, but the line-up is notably light on local movies. Speaking today to ScreenDaily.com, festival director Sandra Den Hamer has bemoaned the absence of strong Dutch features available ...
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News
Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund refused funding
'Stormy weather is expected,' Festival director Sandra Den Hamer warned yesterday at the opening of the International Film Festival of Rotterdam. The cause of the disquiet is the growing uncertainty that surrounds Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund, which supports filmmaking in developing countries. The Fund, named after festival founder Hubert Bals ...
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News
Ex Drummer stirs controversy among Belgian exhibitors
In advance of its world premiere in the Tiger Competition in Rotterdam this weekend, Koen Mortier's Ex Drummer is provoking controversy in Belgium. One leading arthouse exhibitor, Studio Skoop in Ghent, has refused to show the film, which features scenes of graphic violence, rape and self mutilation. Industry sources have ...
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Features
Netherlands Production - In search of Dutch masters
From the outside, it looks as if these are boom times for Dutch production. Paul Verhoeven's Black Book, released in the Netherlands by A-Film in the autumn, is closing in on a million admissions at home and has been sold around the world by London-based sales agent ContentFilm International. Oscar ...
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Features
Co-production markets - 'A good hub where people can meet'
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Rotterdam's CineMart must be one of the most admired events in the film world.Now in its 24th edition, the co-production market has spawned a host of similar events. These range from the Berlinale Co-Production Market to the Pusan Promotion Plan (PPP), and ...
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Reviews
The Monastery: Mr Vig & The Nun
Dir Pernille Rose Gronkjaer. Den. 2006. 84mins A slow burning, lovingly crafted documentary with a melancholy undertow, The Monastery benefits from a wonderfully eccentric protagonist. JorgenLauersen Vig is an 82-year-old Dane whose last goal in life is to turnhis castle into a monastery. If Spike Milligan and Andrei ...
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News
BAFTA reaches for operatic heights
If you are looking for a Wagnerian spectacle, the next Orange British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs) may well provide it.
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News
International rescue: UIP's history and new reorganisation
'If there is any growth in this business globally it's in international,' says Tim Bevan of the UK's Working Title Films. One company that has consistently underlined the truth in Bevan's remark over the last 25 years is United International Pictures (UIP).In late 1981, when UIP was formed in London, ...
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News
Michael Apted: master of adaptability
Michael Apted is something of a chameleon of the film world: the 65-year-old director changes colours with remarkable facility. On the one hand, he is a member of the Hollywood establishment - a Brit who has blossomed in the studio system and currently serves as president of the Director's Guild. ...
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Reviews
4 Elements
Dir/scr: Jiska Rickels. Neth. 2006. 89mins.Jiska Rickels' makes an impressive debut with feature-documentary 4 Elements, a self-consciously poetic film essay that has limited narration and little in the way of dialogue. Consisting of four self-contained segments, each representing one of the four elements - fire, water, earth and air - ...
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Reviews
Miss Potter
Dir: Chris Noonan. UK-US. 2006. 93mins.A period feature about a popular children's writer enduring a traumatic life, Chris Noonan's Miss Potter may follow in the footsteps of Shadowlands (about CS Lewis) and Marc Forster's Finding Neverland (about JM Barrie), but it lacks the emotional depth of either. Very handsomely crafted, ...