All articles by Martin Blaney – Page 173
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Intertainment and Kopelson go separate ways
German rights trader Intertainment and US production company Kopelson Entertainment have mutually agreed to terminate their deal to finance a slate of big budget pictures.According to a statement, the step - effective from Feb 11 - was taken "because of Intertainment's cost-cutting requirements interfering with the production requirements of Kopelson ...
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Festival kickstarts Timebandits journey
The Berlinale has served as the ideal showcase for the new German distributor Timebandits films, which has four films showing in the festival's different sections.While Fatih Akin's new feature Head-On (Gegen Die Wand) premiered in the Official Competition section, Andres Veiel's documentary Die Spielwuetigen unspooled in the Panorama, Felix Randau's ...
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DVD sell-through market surges in Germany and France
Confirming the inexorable growth in the global DVD market, latest figures from Germany and France show DVD sell-through growth towering over both the rental and video sectors.The German home entertainment industry posted a year-on-year growth of 11% in revenues to Euros 1.555 bn in 2003, according to Bundesverband Audiovisuelle Medien ...
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Germany's Ottfilm goes under
After months of speculation about its future, German independent distributor Ottfilm has filed for insolvency, with the German press quoting managing director Christoph Ott as saying that the insolvency had been triggered by a "breach of contract on the part of investors". Business at the Berlin-based outfit will nevertheless continue ...
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Wim Wenders moves into theatrical distribution
Peter Schwartzkopff and Wim Wenders' new company Reverse Angle Production is to enter the German theatrical distribution arena later this year.The first release by Berlin-based Reverse Angle Mediasales will be Wenders' contribution to The Blues series, Soul Of A Man, on May 6, followed by Richard Pearce's The Road To ...
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MEDIA Programme chief moves on
Jacques Delmoly, who has headed the European Union's MEDIA Programme unit since 1995, is to leave his post at the end of March.He will take up a new role as the head of the European Commission's LINGUA project which promotes foreign language learning via the Internet.Delmoly's exit from the MEDIA ...
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Germany's Movienet buys James Joyce adaptation
Germany's Movienet has acquired all German speaking rights for James Joyce adaptation Bloom, starring Stephen Rea and directed by Sean Walsh.'I was very successful with Siddhartha and The Dead and want to continue with high-class literary films in my programme,' commented Movienet's Lothar Seelandt who negotiated the deal with Matt ...
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Europe's indies cash in on DVD gold rush
DVDs are more than just a welcome new revenue stream for Europe's distributors and producers - they are rapidly becoming their primary source of income.San Fu Maltha, whose A-Film ranks as the third largest distributor in the Netherlands on the back of such films as Lord Of The Rings trilogy, ...
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25 directors sign for Euro vision project
25 European film directors - from Germany's Fatih Akin through to Portugal's Teresa Villaverde and Latvia's Laila Pakalnina to Sweden's Jan Troell and Hungary's Bela Tarr - are to each contribute five-minute shorts giving their personal visions of Europe.The European Visions project was conceived by ZDF's Meinholf Zurhorst and ...
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SHIP shapes up with detective trilogy
Studio Hamburg International Production (SHIP), the English-language division of Studio Hamburg Produktion (SHP), has unveiled a slate of five feature projects for production in 2004/2005.The first project scheduled for production at the end of this year is the children's adventure film The Mystery Of Skeleton Island, which will be the ...
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German media fund strikes radical US deal
Producers Eberhard Junkersdorf and Dietmar Guntsche's private German media fund Neue Bioskop Germany (NBG) has teamed up with US producer @radical.media.Junkersdorf said that the co-operation with production and commercials outfit @radical.media, a producer of Oscar nominated documentary The Fog Of War, would "immediately give us a partner at our side ...
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Berlinale co-production market opens for business
The first edition of the Berlinale Co-Production Market opened for business with around 200 participants at the Talent Campus venue of the House of World Cultures.32 projects, including new features by Daniel Burman, Alexander Sokurov, Robert Glinski, Susanne Bier, Goran Paskaljevic and Pang Ho Cheung, were selected from 230 entries ...
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Kinowelt sales slate swelled by Playa, Verhoeven doc
Kinowelt International has picked up Felix Moeller's documentary The Verhoevens and Peter Lichtefeld's new feature Playa Del Futuro for international distribution.Stelios Ziannis, head of international sales at Kinowelt International, plans to begin presales on Lichtefeld's film which was shooting in Cologne before Christmas and will be moving production to Andalucia ...
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Solo takes Your Next Life
German distributor Solo-Film has picked up veteran Spanish director Manuel Gutierrez Aragon's latest feature Your Next Life which will have its world premiere in the Berlinale's Official Competition on Feb 9.Meanwhile, Senator Film Verleih has been named as the distributor for Carsten Fiebeler's East-West comedy Kleinruppin Forever. Handled internationally by ...
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Germany's 'ambivalent' cinema year
"An ambivalent cinema year" was how Rolf Baehr, the outgoing board member of the German Federal Film Board (FFA), described 2003 on presenting Germany's official annual box office figures yesterday.While the box-office success of such local films as Good Bye, Lenin!, The Miracle Of Bern and Luther saw German ...
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New German media fund backs its first feature
US director Aaron Allred's thriller/love story Not A Lovestory is the first feature film project to be backed by the Babelsberg-based MPF Beteiligungs GmbH & Co Zweite KG (MPF) media fund.The production by Wanowski Brothers Filmproduktion and Doris Kirch's Blue Angel Entertainment Film Productions in co-production with EuroArts Medien and ...
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German media funds raise Euros 1.7bn
German media funds raised Euros 1.76 bn equity from private individuals in 2003, according to a survey of 40 initiators by fund specialist Stefan Loipfinger.Michael Oehme, board member of the media funds' interest group Verband Deutscher Medienfonds (VDM), told ScreenDaily.com that these figures showed that the media funds had stabilised ...
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Japanese 2003 box office lifted by Shakedown effect
Bayside Shakedown 2, Katsuyuki Motohiro's comic thriller about feuding cops in Tokyo's trendy bayside district, topped the Japanese box office in 2003, according to figures from the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (Eiren).BS2 grossed $163.7m (Y17.35bn) following its July 2003 release -- a record for a Japanese live-action film.The ...
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Muxmauschenstill wins Max Ophuls Prize
Marcus Mittermeier's feature debut Muxmauschenstill, which will be screening in the Berlinale's Perspektive Deutsches Kino, was the big winner at this year's 25th jubilee edition of the Max Ophuls Prize Film Festival (26 January - 1 February, 2004) for newcomer German-language cinema in Saarbrücken.The black comedy by Berlin-based Schiwago Filmproduktion ...