Latest – Page 517
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Features
Kosovo/Macedonia - Dogme learns new tricks
In late April, Aneta Lesnikovska screened her debut feature Does It Hurt' - The First Balkan Dogma in Skopje, Macedonia. The screening in her homeland followed various festival outings, starting with the world premiere in the Tiger Competition in Rotterdam and also including the Bermuda International Film Festival where the ...
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Features
Industry moves
Den Hamer leaves Rotterdam film festivalSandra Den Hamer is to step down as director of the Rotterdam International Film Festival. She will start work as director of Amsterdam's Filmmuseum from September 1. A new director is now being sought for next year's festival which runs January 23 to February 3.Ng ...
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Distribution - Making a splash
Expectations are high for the Australia and New Zealand box office this year - and not just because of the number of high-profile studio sequels scheduled to open over the summer months.Admissions have been rising steadily in recent years - from 76 million in 1997 to 83.6 million in 2006 ...
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Digital Rights - Territory report - Was this the opening salvo'
Earlier this year Canada's performers' union, the Alliance of Canadian Television, Cinema and Radio Artists (Actra), held its first-ever strike. The six-week stoppage may come to be seen as one of the initial skirmishes in the North America digital rights war.Actra, representing 21,000 performers across the country, is the most ...
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Digital Rights - Territory report - Australia
The agreements covering film production in Australia are in place until 2009, so all is calm between the unions right now. Digital and new media is not an issue - yet - because the agreements in place already capture the small amount of money flowing from new technologies.Actors' fees are ...
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Digital Rights - Territory report - France
France's union system differs greatly from the US. While there are lobby groups and associations, there are no guilds per se which resemble the Hollywood heavies such as the WGA, DGA and SAG. The closest thing to those organisations is the Societe des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (Sacd) which represents ...
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Features
Cannes do attitudes
It is difficult to imagine what the mood was like at the inaugural Cannes film festival, which this year reaches its 60th birthday.The concept of an event celebrating cinema in all its manifestations and pitting films against each other competitively was still relatively novel back in 1946. The seaside resort ...
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Market focus - Talk of the virtual town
Distributors are finding ways to capitalise on and measure the internet buzz of a film before its release with the help of digital marketing specialists.Historically, word of mouth has been nearly impossible to measure or track, offering marketers only limited anecdotal information. But the advent of blogs and viral online ...
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Features
Digital rights - Unions - The bill of rights
The start of a new round of labour talks often has Hollywood on edge. But this summer the anxiety level will be higher than usual when representatives of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (Amptp) begin negotiations over a new contract ...
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Features
Digital rights - The new media issue from both sides
The Writers Guild of America positionFor writers, a simple principle lies at the heart of discussions of new or non-traditional media such as the internet, mobile phones and other digital platforms. "If the companies get paid, we get paid. That's our view," explains WGA West executive director and lead negotiator ...
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Features
Digital Rights - Talking points - Any other business'
Home-video residualsThe home-video residual formula established in the mid-1980s before the video market took off has been a thorn in the guilds' sides ever since. The formula is variously characterised as being based on the 20% royalty on video sales that goes to the producer of a film, or as ...
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Features
Digital Rights - Territory report - The UK
The UK's film unions regard the digital revolution with a mix of excitement and trepidation. In the short term, there is the threat of job losses. Lab technicians and cinema projectionists are among those already affected by moves away from celluloid. Production crews are also experiencing change as new technology ...
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United states - Stripped Down And Rebuilt
Since arriving at Intermedia two years ago as CEO, Martin Schurmann has worked to reorganise the Los Angeles-based company and steer it out of troubled waters.Under previous leadership, including most recently Moritz Borman, Intermedia laboured under the weight of its ambitions, producing underperforming behemoths such as Terminator 3: Rise Of ...
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Features
United states - A Lion Of A Job
"The challenge," says Clark Woods, president of domestic theatrical distribution at MGM, "is that each of the producers comes with fully financed films and, in most cases, fully financed p&a arrangements, so they have a vested interest in what we're doing. Trying to balance all those things is somewhat difficult."Woods, ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Seaside heights
While some in the British film business sit in their Soho offices complaining about funding, Medb Films founders Jan Dunn and Elaine Wickham are quietly building an indie film-making mini-empire in Ramsgate, on the Kent Coast.The seaside town is not known for its film scene, but that is changing since ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Guardian angels
In May 2006, UK screenwriter Matt Hanson soft-launched his A Swarm Of Angels project, the first step in creating a $2m (£1m) feature film that will be conceived, developed, funded, produced and ultimately distributed via the internet.The project is touted as the first truly "open-source" feature film - involving movie ...
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India - UFO prepped for lift-off
One of the more surprising revelations made by the Indian businessman and entrepreneur Raaja Kanwar, the man pioneering digital cinema and exhibition in the territory, is that he is not "a fan of Hindi movies".Kanwar's prefers English-language films and international arthouse movies and on meeting him one can see the ...
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France - Critical mass
Jean-Michel Frodon, director of France's venerable Cahiers Du Cinema since 2003 has spent the last couple of decades travelling the world to track the newest trends in world cinema. He is also the man behind the decision to launch an English edition of the Cahiers, the 50-year-old bastion of film ...
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Industry moves
KING IS A PARTICIPANTJonathan King has left Focus Features as executive vice-president of production and has joined Participant Productions as executive vice-president in charge of production. Prior to Focus, King served as president of production for Laurence Mark Productions, working on such titles as Dreamgirls and The Lookout.SULTAN MAKES PEACE ...
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Features
Set Report - Cracking the code
Alex de la Iglesia has built a reputation across Europe as a comedy director with a larger-than-life persona and spontaneous style of film-making. So it came as little surprise to find him painting the walls of St Edmund Hall in Oxford and bellowing at his crew to work faster when ...