Longtime producer, sales and acquisitions executive Ron Gell has launched Los Angeles-based sales and production outfit The G-Machine.

Gell will arrive at next week's EFM with seven titles, among them the Cannes 2007 Directors Fortnight entry PVC-1 from Spiros Stathoulopoulas, which was shot in one continuous take. A terrorism thriller, it is based on the true story of a woman who was turned into a human time bomb. Merida Urquia and Daniel Paez star.

The slate includes Thomas Mignone's sex abuse drama On The Doll starring Brittany Snow, Theresa Russell and James Russo, Wayne Kopping's Islamic jihad documentary Obsession and the thriller Roman starring Kristen Bell.

Rounding out the initial slate are James Furino's drama Stealing Martin Lane with Dylan Baker, horror title Afterthought and Michael Eldridge's New York-set Homeland about the romance between an Israeli man and Palestinian woman.

Gell, a former executive vice president and head of international sales at New Films International and acquisitions director at Sony, is joined by long-standing associate and chairman Cynthia Marquoit, an independent producer and former senior executive at Modern Videofilm.

'There's a market out there for specialty films like these that distributors can buy and make money from,' Gell said. 'Right now we're seeing a glut of high-priced programming backed by hedge fund slates that many buyers can't afford because there's no increase in their budgets. We want to offer independent, high quality movies that are affordable to smaller buyers.'

Gell said the privately backed G-Machine would shortly be moving into productions.