All articles by Martin Blaney – Page 134

  • News

    Ascot Elite picks up five titles including Love In The Time Of Cholera

    2007-07-18T03:00:00Z

    Leading Swiss independent film distributor Ascot Elite Entertainment has announced the acquisition of the rights to five new titles for its 2007/08 slate. The five new titles acquired are: Mike Newell's Gabriel Garcia Marquez adaptation Love In The Time Of Cholera, with John Leguizamo and Hector Elizondo, acquired from Summit; ...

  • News

    Yerevan gives awards to War And Peace and Import/Export

    2007-07-17T12:29:00Z

    Armenian documentary filmmaker Vardan Hovhannisyan was the big winner at this year's Golden Apricot International Film Festival in Yerevan, picking up four of the prizes for his film A Story Of People In War And Peace at the awards ceremony preceding the closing film The Banishment by Russia's Andrei Zviagintsev. ...

  • News

    Maire promises diversity and premieres at Locarno 2007

    2007-07-11T11:55:00Z

    A 'diversity in the range of possibilities of filmmaking' is how Locarno Film Festival's Frederic Maire describes the line-up for his second festival as artistic director. The Swiss festival kicks off Aug 1 with a screening of the Japanese film Vexille by Fumihiko Sori on the Piazza Grande. 'The two ...

  • News

    German Films Previews offers 17 projects to international buyers

    2007-07-09T15:04:00Z

    The European representatives of such US distributors as The Weinstein Company, Paramount Vantage, and Miramax are among over 50 international film buyers attending the German Films Previews showcase which are being held for the first time in Cologne from July 12 until the weekend. Other companies confirmed as coming to ...

  • News

    Telepool picks up Ruzowitzky's new feature Lilly The Witch

    2007-07-09T11:12:00Z

    Telepool will handle the international sales for Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky's new feature Lilly The Witch (Hexe Lilli) which is shooting for six weeks at the Babelsberg Studios before moving on to locations in Austria. Speaking exclusively to ScreenDaily.com, producer Corinna Mehner of blue eyes fiction said that the German-Austrian-Spanish ...

  • News

    World Cinema Fund gives largest award to Guerra's Wind Journeys

    2007-07-08T17:42:00Z

    Five projects from Latin America, the Middle East and Africa have been selected by the World Cinema Fund (WCF) from a total of 81 submissions from 28 countries for funding of $313,387 (Euros 230,000).The largest single amount of funding - $81,753 (Euros 60,000) - went to Colombian director Ciro Guerra's ...

  • News

    Brandenburg gives second state guarantee to Mr Nobody

    2007-07-06T12:14:00Z

    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 ...

  • News

    Robert Thalheim: Auschwitz story

    2007-07-06T00:00:00Z

    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 ...

  • News

    German Fund exceeds cap again for Bryan Singer's Valkyrie

    2007-07-05T16:25:00Z

    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 ...

  • News

    Yereven to host 12 projects at first regional co-production forum

    2007-07-05T10:53:00Z

    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 ...

  • News

    Buena Vista partner on fifth outing of Wild Soccer Bunch

    2007-07-03T15:29:00Z

    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 ...

  • News

    German sales company Cine-International to close its doors

    2007-07-03T12:23:00Z

    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 ...

  • News

    The Band's Visit wins top honour at Munich

    2007-07-01T22:20:00Z

    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 ...

  • News

    Bavaria Film International picks up The Anarchist's Wives

    2007-06-29T12:54:00Z

    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), ...

  • News

    International projects take the lead with new German fund

    2007-06-28T15:33:00Z

    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 ...

  • News

    Lichtmeer moves into production with Angelopoulos project

    2007-06-28T12:33:00Z

    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 ...

  • News

    Warner Bros Germany to distribute Breloer's Buddenbrooks

    2007-06-26T18:25:00Z

    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 ...

  • News

    MDC takes on sales for Meletzky's Shanghai winner Plan

    2007-06-25T15:52:00Z

    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 ...

  • News

    Fatih Akin: stairway to heaven

    2007-06-22T00:00:00Z

    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 ...

  • News

    German exhibition: uneasy riders

    2007-06-22T00:00:00Z

    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 ...