All articles by Sandy George – Page 27
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News
Hunger wins Sydney Film Festival's inaugural competition
Hunger, UK artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen's portrait of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in his dying days, has won the inaugural A$60,000 Sydney Film Prize. The film won the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and wowed audiences when it screened twice as part of the Sydney Film Festival just ...
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Screen Australia appoints Fitchett, Brady to interim roles
Chris Fitchett has been put in charge of production support and investment on an interim basis at the new super agency Screen Australia, while Tait Brady is temporarily in charge of marketing. Fitchett, whose responsibilities also include development, is the existing chief executive of the Australian Film Commission (AFC). This ...
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New Zealand introduces 40 per cent grant for its own films
Feature films with significant New Zealand content got a big boost in the country's 2008 budget today with the government pledging to give back 40 per cent of what is spent in NZ on production from July 1 this year. Expenditure must exceed $3.93m (NZ$5m) to qualify for the new ...
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South Australian Film Corporation upgrades to new home
South Australian Premier Mike Rann formally announced today in Los Angeles that the South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC) will move to a site in Adelaide, best known for housing psychiatric patients. The site is in the south-east Adelaide suburb of Glenside and is being redeveloped for a range of ...
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Odin's Eye appoints Victoria Treole as head of acquisitions
Victoria Treole, one-time Miramax representative in Australia, has been appointed head of acquisitions for Michael Favelle's start-up sales outfit Odin's Eye Entertainment, based in Sydney. Odin's Eye is at Cannes for the first time with a mix of clever genre films, and low-budget dramas. The company has already shown a ...
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Dorman, Barclayjoin cast of Caesar's Prime Mover
Australian writer/director David Caesar (Dirty Deeds) has started production on Prime Mover, starring Michael Dorman and New Zealand's Emily Barclay. Prime mover is a term used in Australia for the huge semi-trailer trucks that thunder along outback roads. The film is billed as a diesel-charged love story about a young ...
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Clubland producers form Goalpost Pictures Australia
The Australian producers behind Clubland and the upcoming Elise, starring songstress Natalie Imbruglia, have formed a production company Goalpost Pictures Australia.The outfit has UK sales agency and executive producers Goalpost Film as a minority shareholder.Long-term partners Rosemary Blight, Ben Grant, Kylie du Fresne and Cass O'Connor are the principals in ...
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Asia Pacific Screen Awards establishes an academy
Encouraging dialogue, collaboration and business relationships between filmmakers is the underlying aim of the establishment of The Academy of the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSAs). The next step in the development of the awards was announced in Brisbane today by Queensland Premier Anna Bligh.'The APSAs bring the best filmmakers from ...
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Odin's Eye sets up sales office in New York
Dave Pederson, a producer on the Oscar-nominated documentary Super Size Me, is to represent Australian sales agent Odin's Eye Entertainment (OEE) in New York. His title will be vice president of international sales, but as head of the new office he will also be sourcing product for the fledgling Sydney-based ...
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Features
New Zealand - Facilities - Delivering post
"Everybody thinks we went to New Zealand for its exotic locales," says Jon Landau, producer of James Cameron's 3D sci-fi epic Avatar. "We never left the studio. We did rent a warehouse off-site because we needed more space, but all our filming was studio-based."Landau wanted New Zealand's talent rather than ...
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Features
New Zealand - A-list Shines with Kiwi polish
It may be small but New Zealand is one of the world's most popular filming locations. James Cameron has finished shooting the action sci-fi Avatar for Twentieth Century Fox in the territory, while Guillermo Del Toro is set to spend the next four years in New Zealand shooting two Hobbit ...
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Sydney Film Festival to open with Happy-Go-Lucky
Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky is one of 12 films chosen by the Sydney Film Festival (SFF) to be in its inaugural official competition and will also be the opening night film on June 4. The competition also features three world premieres including Vincent Ward's New Zealand documentary Rain Of The Children, ...
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Fox picks up Australian rights for Children Of Huang Shi
Australia producer Jonathan Shteinman has extricated The Children Of Huang Shi from Icon's take-over of Dendy Films and done a deal that will see 20th Century Fox Film Distributors release the film in Australia.The film premiered in China in early April and Fox will release the film in Australia in ...
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News
Lightning picks up Aussie horror Gates Of Hell
US sales agent Lightning Entertainment has picked up world rights to horror film The Gates Of Hell just in time for Cannes. Australian writer/director Kelly Dolen met all but one of the private investors that put up the $1.1m (A$1.2m) to make the film while installing theatre systems in their ...
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Australia - Hopscotch jumps to next level
Independent Australian distributor Hopscotch is reinventing itself. The company's ambitious managing director Troy Lum wants to transform Hopscotch from a theatrically-focused distributor to a vertically integrated, content-driven entity.'When the digital era really hits, producers will reap the rewards,' says Lum. 'Distribution is changing because people consume content in different ways ...
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Queensland signs MoU with Korea's Gyeonggi province
A 10-year-old sister state relationship between the Australian state of Queensland and the Gyeonggi Province of South Korea has been extended into the film arena with this week's signing of a memorandum of understanding. The agreement is between the Gyeonggi Film Commission, the Gyeonggi Digital Contents Agency, and the Pacific ...
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Mason, Collee partner with Hopscotch in production venture
Australian distributor Hopscotch has enticed two of Sydney's most successful international filmmakers, producer Andrew Mason (the Matrix trilogy) and screenwriter John Collee (Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World) to help attract investment and talent to pump into its new production division. The pair will work closely with ...
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UK's Warp, Australia's Madman pact for at least two low-budget films
Mark Herbert, managing director of Warp Films in the UK, said he wanted to get involved with Australian filmmakers when he visited in October last year; he has turned out to be a man of his word. Warp, which is based in Sheffield in Yorkshire, plans to work with ...
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Australian Writers Guild quits Australian Screen Council in protest
The dream of the Australian film and television production industry talking to government with one powerful voice on key issues is in tatters tonight with one of the four member organisations of the Australian Screen Council (ASC) resigning over what it says is financial mismanagement.The executive director of the Australian ...
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Row erupts in Australia over production offset
Two Australian film agencies are trading insults over the financing arrangements behind comedy drama Subdivision, which Japanese Story director Sue Brooks starts filming April 14. Both are investors.Once completed, Subdivision will be applying for 40% of its costs back under the new producer offset. It has always been assumed that ...