All articles by Martin Blaney – Page 153
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Bavaria adds three from Li, Armendariz, Svoboda
BavariaFilm International (BFI) has added three new titles to its sales lineup fromChinese filmmaker Li Yu, Spain's Montxo Armendariz and Austria's AntoninSvobodaThe triowill be screening at the film festivals in Venice, Toronto and San Sebastiannext month.Li Yu'sChinese-French co-production Hongyan (Dam Street)will be premiering in Venice's Orizzonti and then showing in ...
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Workingman's Death starts life with PTD
Luxembourg-basedPaul Thiltges Distributions (PTD) will handle international sales on Austrian filmmakerMichael Glawogger's documentary Workingman's Death.Thefilm will have its world premiere in the Orizzonti sidebar at Venice nextmonth.Produced by Lotus Film with Germany's Quinte Film, Workingman'sDeath focuses on the act of performing heavy manual labour and on thoseworkers who toil at ...
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Warhol set for major Vienna retrospective
Andy Warhol is to be givenone of the most comprehensive presentations of his cinematic ouevre to date atthis year's Vienna International Film Festival, the Viennale (October 14-26).Curated by theUS filmmaker and author Jonas Mekas in cooperation with the Filmmuseum, theretrospective will show more than 30 of Warhol's central works as ...
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Weber quits Bavaria to launch own sales outfit
Michael Weber, managingdirector of Bavaria Media and Bavaria Film International (BFI), is leaving thecompany to set up his own as-yet-unnamed world sales outfit. Munich based sales companyBFI will now be run by two of its experienced executives: head of salesThorsten Schaumann and head of marketing Thorsten Ritter who have been ...
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New Locarno chief outlines festival strategy
Locarno Film Festival's incoming artisticdirector Frederic Maire has set himself of the goal of making the event"the festival of the future."Speaking to ScreenDaily.com a day afterthe unanimous decision by the festival's board to appoint him as successor toIrene Bignardi, Maire said that "the spirit of Locarno must be preserved:Locarno is ...
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Austrian box office plunges in first half of 2005
Mirroring the general internationaltrend, Austrian exhibitors have reported year-on-year falls in box-officerevenues and admissions for the first half of 2005, but are bullish aboutprospects for the next six months.According to figures collated by theAustrian exhibitors' association FLA, 7.35m tickets were sold in the first sixmonths - down 18.3% on 2004's ...
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Pair of film channels to launch in Germany
Germany's free-TV channels Tele 5 and NBC Giga are beingrelaunched as film channels from this autumn.Tele 5, which is a 100% subsidiary of Herbert Kloiber's TeleMuenchen Group (TMG), will be relaunched on September 22 and has acquired a70-title package from license trader Intertainment including Grey Owl, TheBig Kahuna and The ...
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Garcia's Nine Lives takes top Locarno prize
RodrigoGarcia's Nine Lives has becomethe first US film to win Locarno's top award, the Golden Leopard for Best Film,for 14 years.The last US film to win thetop honour was Tom DiCillo's feature debut Johnny Suede at the festival in 1991.Nine Lives, which was the only US title selected for thisyear's ...
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Bignardi plans life after Locarno
Locarno's outgoing artistic director Irene Bignardi says she hopes hersuccessor will build on the work of the last five years to give the festivalits own unique place in the international festival landscape.Speaking exclusively to ScreenDaily.com, she diplomatically skirtedthe issue of confirming who her successor would be (the name of Frederic ...
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Switzerland to rejoin Media Programme
Swiss filmmakers will be able to participate fully in the EuropeanUnion's MEDIA Programme from January 1, 2006 after being excluded for the lastthirteen years. Swiss media professionals had been barred from MEDIA after the Swisspopulation voted in December 1992 against membership of the European EconomicArea (EEA). Subsequently, in an effort ...
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Maire to replace Bignardi as Locarno artistic director
Frederic Maire is to succeed Irene Bignardi as artistic director for the Locarno FilmFestival from the 2006 edition.Originally, the festival hadintended to announce the successful candidate on August 14, a day after thisyear's event wraps. But an apparent leak has led to news of the appointmentbeing widely reported on Swiss ...
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North African countries launch Maghreb promotional body
Filmmakers from Tunisia, Algeria and Moroccohave joined forces to launch Maghreb Cinemas, an international promotional bodyfor the three countries' film industries.The initiative was unveiled during this year's Open Doorsworkshop in Locarno where 25 filmmakers from the Maghreb region presented newfeature projects to potential production partners from Western Europe.Maghreb Cinemas will ...
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Shortlist narrows in search for new Locarno director
With less than a week to go beforeLocarno's board makes a decision on the successor to Irene Bignardi as thefestival's artistic director, the news on the festival grapevine is that thechoice will be between two names: Jean Perret, director of the Nyon DocumentaryFilm Festival "Visions du Reel", and Frederic Maire, ...
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Higuchi named head of licensing at Constantin
Yoko Higuchi has been promoted to the post ofhead of licensing at Munich-based Constantin Film.She will work closely with Constantin's CEO Fred Kogel onall licensing and sales activities and also oversee international acquisitionsin tandem with Kogel and Herman Weigel.Over the past two years, Higuchi played a key role in theacquisition ...
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Swiss film chief calls for end to 'watering can' funding
Nicolas Bideau,the incoming head of the film section at Switzerland's Federal Office ofCulture (BAK) from October 1, has called for concentration of funds into fewerprojects and an improvement of Swiss cinema's image at home and abroad.Speaking at the weekendat the Locarno Film Festival, Bideau said that he was looking to ...
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AUTLOOK Filmsales racks up Crash Test Dummies sales
AUTLOOKFilmsales has clocked up the first sales on Joerg Kalt's Crash Test Dummies which had its worldpremiere in Berlin's International Forum sidebar and was shown in Karlovy Varylast month. AUTLOOK'smanaging director Peter Jager told ScreenDaily.com that Kalt's debutfeature has been sold to Germany's Stardust Filmverleih and Poland's AgainstGravity, while he ...
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Axel Springer takes over ProSiebenSat.1 Media
Germanpublishing empire Axel Springer has acquired a majority stake in theProSiebenSat.1 Media to create the only listed media group in Germany withactivities both in the print media and television sectors.Inan Euros 2.5bn acquisition subject to anti-trust and media authority approval,Springer intends to increase its existing shareholding in ProSiebenSat.1 fromthe present ...
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Locarno hit by hotel room shortage
As the Locarno Film Festival begins its 58thedition this week, the event's organisers are having to address the deepeningcrisis in the Swiss lakeside town's hotels. This year, the festival has 153 fewer hotelrooms to draw on in Locarno for guests after the closure of Hotel Zurigo andBeau Rivage and the ...
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Kinowelt offers new rental terms to exhibitors
Distributor Kinowelt has entered the debate on the lengthof theatrical "windows" by offering exhibitors a new arrangement forthe calculation of rental charges.In principle, Kinowelt intends to hold fast to asix-month "window" before a film can appear on video and DVD. In theevent of one of its new films having an ...