All articles by Martin Blaney – Page 130
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Brandenburg gives second state guarantee to Mr Nobody
Jaco van Dormael's latest feature Mr Nobody, based on his own original screenplay, is the second film after Kevin Spacey's Beyond The Sea to be awarded a state guarantee by the Land of Brandenburg. Brandenburg will guarantee up to 80% of the $7.1m (Euros 5:25 m) loan from Commerzbank, which ...
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Robert Thalheim: Auschwitz story
A young German director draws on his memories of Auschwitz for a contemporary film about life in the shadow of evil. Martin Blaney reports. It was Alain Resnais' 1959 film Hiroshima Mon Amour that provided the inspiration for Robert Thalheim's And Along Come Tourists.Resnais' juxtaposition of the catastrophic impact of ...
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German Fund exceeds cap again for Bryan Singer's Valkyrie
The United Artists' production of Bryan Singer's WWII drama Valkyrie - which begins shooting in Berlin and Babelsberg from July 18 - is the second international film after Speed Racer to be granted support from the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF) greater thaan the cap of $5.4m (Euros 4m). The ...
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Yereven to host 12 projects at first regional co-production forum
Nine features and three documentary projects from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Serbia, Russia and Turkey are to be pitched to potential co-producers and financiers at the Directors Across Borders' (DAB) first Regional Co-Production Forum (July 10-12) during next week's Golden Apricot International Film Festival in Yerevan. The low-budget projects include the ...
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Buena Vista partner on fifth outing of Wild Soccer Bunch
The German outpost of Buena Vista International will also distribute the fifth film of The Wild Soccer Bunch franchise which begins shooting today at locations in Saarland and Munich. With the working title of DWK5 - Die Wilden Kerle: Hinterm Horizont, the SamFilm production by Joachim Masannek sees the cast ...
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German sales company Cine-International to close its doors
Munich-based world sales company Cine-International Filmvertrieb has announced that it will be shutting down operations as of tomorrow (Wednesday). Rumours had been circulating within the film industry in Germany that the company was having problems, and speculation was fuelled further when Cine-International did not attend the MIP-TV in April or ...
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The Band's Visit wins top honour at Munich
Admissions were up almost 10% to around 62,000 for the 25th anniversary of the Munich Film Festival, which closed with the world premiere of Rainer Kaufmann's Runaway Horse (Ein Fliehendes Pferd) based on the novel of the same name by Martin Walser.This year's opening film - Eran Kolirin's feature debut ...
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Bavaria Film International picks up The Anarchist's Wives
Bavaria Film International has picked up international distribution rights to Marie Noelle and Peter Sehr's new feature The Anarchist's Wives which begins its German shoot at the MMC Studios in Cologne today (Friday). The German-Spanish-French co-production between Noelle and Sehr's P'Artisan Filmproduktion, ZIP Films (Barcelona), KV Entertainment/Ibarretxe & Co. (Bilbao), ...
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International projects take the lead with new German fund
International co-productions shooting in Germany have received more than half of the $28m (Euros 20.9m) allocated by the new German Federal Film Fund (DFFF) in its first six months of operation. Speaking at a review of the DFFF's first six months at this week's Munich Film Festival, project manager Christine ...
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Lichtmeer moves into production with Angelopoulos project
Munich-based distributor Lichtmeer Filmverleih has relaunched itself as the Cologne/Berlin production company Lichtmeer Film, which will have Theo Angelopoulos's next feature Dust Of Time as its first project. The co-production with Italy's Classic and Albachiara and the director's own company Angelopoulos Film, will star Harvey Keitel, Bruno Ganz, Willem Dafoe ...
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Warner Bros Germany to distribute Breloer's Buddenbrooks
Warner Bros. Pictures Germany will distribute writer-director Heinrich Breloer's feature film debut Buddenbrooks - Ein Geschaeft Von Einiger Groesse which begins shooting from Aug 1. The adaptation of Thomas Mann's novel Buddenbrooks about the life and decline of a 19th-century mercantile family is being produced by Bavaria Film and Colonia ...
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MDC takes on sales for Meletzky's Shanghai winner Plan
Berlin-based sales company MDC has picked up international distribution rights for Franziska Meletzky's According To The Plan (Frei Nach Plan) which won best film honours at the Jin Jue Awards in the competition section of the Shanghai International Film Festival this weekend. The film, which is Meletzky's second feature after ...
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German exhibition: uneasy riders
Germany's rocky ride continues as the 2007 box office looks set to stall, writes Martin Blaney. Germany's cinema fortunes were revived in 2006 after a poor 2005, with a year-on-year increase in box-office takings of 9.6%, and admissions rising by 7.9%. But exhibitors have had little to cheer in the ...
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Fatih Akin: stairway to heaven
Expectations were high for German director Fatih Akin's follow-up to arthouse hit Head-On. So were they met' Martin Blaney reports. Fatih Akin is a relieved man. He has got the difficult follow-up film out of the way. Head-On won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2003 and was an arthouse ...
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Cologne's MMC Studios to launch in-house strand
MMC Independent, the production arm of Cologne's MMC Studios, will start developing feature films in-house in addition to serving as a co-producer on third-party projects. Speaking exclusively to ScreenDaily.com during this week's Medienforum NRW, MMC Independent production executive Basti Griese explained that MMC Independent's recently expanded team 'intends to become ...
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ARRI picks up world sales for Sanders-Brahms' new feature Clara
ARRI Media Worldsales has picked up international distribution rights for Helma Sanders-Brahms' drama Clara which begins the German part of its shoot in North Rhine-Westphalia from tomorrow. The German-French-Hungarian co-production between Integral Film/Helma Sanders-Brahms Filmproduktion, B.A. Produktion, France's MACT Productions and Budapest-based Objektiv Filmstudio had been shooting at locations in ...
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Eastern European Acquisition Pool signs deals with Barefoot, Boje Buck
Berlin-based Eastern European Acquisition Pool (EEAP) has acquired rights to new productions by Germany's Boje Buck Produktion and Barefoot Films for Central and Eastern Europe as well as for the CIS territories.All rights were secured for these territories to Detlev Buck's first children's film Hands Off Mississippi after EEAP had ...
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Munich honours Kline and Friedkin
US actor Kevin Kline and veteran Hollywood film-maker William Friedkin are to receive the Munich Film Festival's CineMerit Award for services to cinema this year. Previous recipients of the CineMerit Award included such leading international film industry figures as Barry Levinson, Sir Alan Parker, Milos Forman, and Susan Sarandon. Together ...
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Bodrov's follow-up to Mongol won't be ready until 2010
Ahead of the opening of Sergei Bodrov's historical epic Mongol in Russian cinemas on Sept 21, producer Sergei Selyanov of STV has indicated that the director's second outing into the life of Genghis Khan will be ready in around three years time ('not any earlier') and stressed that both films ...
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Simple Things takes award as Kinotavr ramps up business
Alexei Popogrebsky's second feature film Simple Things was the big winner at this year's Kinotavr Open Russian Film Festival in Sochi, picking up the Grand Prix for Best Film as well as prizes for Best Direction and Best Actor. Popogrebsky, who came to international prominence and critical acclaim in 2003 ...