All articles by Geoffrey Macnab – Page 183
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News
Trust sells Guerrilla Girl to Colombia
Copenhagen-based sales agent Trust has closed a deal withColombian distributor Cineplex for Frank Piasecki Poulsen's feature documentaryGuerrilla Girl.When premiered at the IDFA Festival in Amsterdamlate last year, the film caused a huge controversy back in Colombia.To make the film, Poulsen had entered Colombiaillegally and spent three months in a jungle ...
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News
Iran exporters blossom at the European Film Market
New Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may haveunsettled western governments with his fervid anti-western rhetoric but thathasn't affected the continuing international push of Iranian cinema. There were six Iraniantitles in official selection in Berlin this year, and for the very first time,the Government has paid for private Iranian sales outfits to ...
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News
Latido wraps up sales on its Berlin slate
As the European Film Market(EFM) enters its final furlong, Massimo Saidel'sMadrid-based Latido has been wrapping up sales on anumber of titles on its Berlin slate. Goya winner The Method has gone to France (CTV), and Chile (Bazooka) with Mikado poised to take Italian rights.De Profundis, Latido's big-budget adultanimated feature, has ...
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News
Marilyn Manson film impresses buyers
Lured by the presence in Berlin of Goth rocker MarilynManson, buyers have been buzzing round Manson's Phantasmagoria The Visions Of Lewis Carroll.Wild Bunch subsidiary Pan-Europeene will handle the French release of the film, Lucky Red has taken Italy,Triangel for Scandinavia, SPIfor Eastern Europe with Tarantula poised to board asSwiss co-producer.Meanwhile ...
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News
Judelewicz preps My Life As A Dog sequel
Pascal Judelewicz'sParis-based Les Films De Cinema, the production outfit behind Panorama entry BirdsOf Heaven, has announced a slate ofprojects all to shoot this year.The films are Hair Of TheDog, the sequel to My Life As ADog, starring Stellan Skarsgaard andto be directed by Ludi Boeken (Deadlines); Catherine Cabrol's House 5 ...
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News
Nimbus slate to include two Kragh-Jacobsen features
Prolific Danish production house Nimbus Film is pushingahead with a slate of new projects including two features from Kragh-Jacobsen (Mifune) which may shoot back to back.First up should be romantic comedy The Sandwich Thief, dueto shoot in September. Once that is wrapped, Kragh-Jacobsenwill move straight ahead with political thriller, Another ...
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Wajda to tackle feature on wartime massacre of Poles
Revered 79-year-old Polish auteur AndrzejWajda, in Berlin to receive an honorary Golden Bear,has revealed details of what promises to be one of the most ambitious andcontentious films he has ever made.The new feature will deal with the KatynForest massacre, in which an estimated20,000 Poles were killed by the Soviet Union ...
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Woody flirts with France
IsWoody Allen going Gallic' In the Martin-Gropius-Bau, there have been strongrumours that the much-travelled US filmmaker is looking to shoot a new featurein France as early as this spring.Allen isexpected in Paris for the Cesars later this month. The word at the EFM is thathe has been discreetly sounding out ...
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DOCker five pool EFM resources
Five of thebest-known sales outfits in the documentary arena are pooling resources in theEuropean Film Market in Berlin. SND Films,Doc & Co, Films Transit, Deckert Distribution and First Hand Films are thepartners involved in the venture, dubbed Meet The DOCkers! The fivecompanies, normally business rivals, are sharing space at Martin-Gropius-Bauand ...
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Ambitious Rome festival to launch co-production event
Theinaugural Rome Film Festival (Oct 13-21) is looking to set up aco-production event along the lines of Rotterdam's CineMart which will includea cash prize for the best project presented."TheCineMart structure is so far the best one," explained Rome's internationalprogramme manager Teresa Cavina on the decision to emulate Rotterdam's popularpitching bazaar.Rome'sindustry ...
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News
Auteurs are New Crowned Hope for Vienna
Furtherdetails are emerging of the six new features being prepared as part of Vienna'sNew Crowned Hope Festival (November 14-December 13) to celebrate the 250thanniversary of Mozart's birth.Titlesare Bahman Ghobadi's The Last Symphony Of The Kurds, Garin Nugroho's RequiemFrom Java,Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Intimacy, Paz Encina's Hamaca Paraguaya, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun'sDarattand Tsai Ming-Liang's Dark ...
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News
Famke Janssen to star in Juraj Jakubisko's Bathory
Famke Janssen is toplay the notorious Countess Bathory in Juraj Jakubisko's $12.6 million epic, Bathory.The 17thCentury Hungarian countess was nicknamed "the blood countess" for her penchantfor bathing in virgins' blood. TheCzech/Slovak/Hungarian/UK co-production has already started second-unitphotography, with principal photography set to begin next month.Bathory is one offive new projects with ...
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News
Brisseau explores his own story in Exterminating Angels
Controversial Frenchfilmmaker Jean-Claude Brisseau is at work on what promises to be his mostcontentious feature yet. Late last year, Brisseau wasfound guilty of sexually harassing two young actresses auditioning for roles inhis feature, Choses Secretes(2002). Now, in The Exterminating Angels, being sold by Rezo, he deals indramatised form with events ...
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News
Trier hits 50 and decides to 'narrow down'
Lars Von Trier is to downsize. Themercurial Dane yesterday issued another of his 'statements.' The subject thistime was his own 'Revitality.' 'In my fiftieth year Ifeel I have earned the privilege of narrowing down,' he declared.'In conjunction with the departure of VibekeWindelov, who has been my producer for ten years, ...
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Wild Bunch back Marc Caro's new sci-fi action film
Marc Caro, the French film-makerwho collaborated with Jean-Pierre Jeunet on Delicatessen and The City Of Lost Children, is preparing anextravagant new sci-fi action movie called DanteXXI that is being represented for worldwide sales by Wild Bunch.Billed by the seller as Cubemeets Gattaca,it's a tale about a convict in space. Tormented ...
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Troubled German media fund will fight on, says CEO
Andy GroschCEO of beleaguered German media fund VIP, made a defiant defence ofhis company at the Screen International Europe Film Finance Summit, shruggingoff a new lawsuit being prepared against the company as pure nonsense. Eventhough his business partner Andreas Schmid has beenin custody on charges of tax evasion since Sept ...
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Gilliam goes west with McMurtry's Billy The Kid
Terry Gilliam is to team up with Brokeback Mountain co-screenwriter and Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry on AnythingFor Billy, a new feature inspired by wild west anti-hero, Billy The Kid. Gilliam is attached to direct the new project, which isadapted from McMurtry's best-selling novel. Anything For Billyis about Ben Sippy, an ...
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Reviews
Gitmo
Dirs: Erik Gandini,Tarik Saleh. 78mins. Den-Swe. 2005.There is something Kafka-esqueabout the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba. Despitebeing part of the War On Terror, prisoners detainedhere in their strident orange suits are not given "Prisoner Of War" status butare treated as "Unlawful Combatants." Many have been left in limbo for ...
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Reviews
Running Scared
Dir/scr: Wayne Kramer. US-Ger. 2006. 122mins.Film-maker Wayne Kramer follows up hisOscar-nominated film noir The Cooler withRunning Scared, a hyper-charged,ultra-violent thriller that opens in frantic fashion and never slows down.While Kramer succeeds insetting a relentless narrative pace and shows plenty of flair for stagingbloody set-pieces, his sledgehammer approach has obvious drawbacks. ...
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Reviews
KZ
Dir/sc: Rex Bloomstein. UK.2005. 97mins.Initially KZ,Rex Bloomstein's harrowing documentary, appears tocover seemingly familiar territory. His subject is the former concentrationcamp of the title, located at Mauthausen in UpperAustria, and the last of the Nazi death camps to be liberated after the war.Thousands of men, women and children from more than ...