All articles by Sandy George – Page 54
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Sydney screening of Ken Park raided by police
Australian police stepped in to prevent a much-publicised Sydney screening of the banned US film Ken Park. The film hardly got past the opening credits before the it was confiscated in front of the capacity crowd gathered at an inner city town hall.Several of the organisers, including high-profile critic Margaret ...
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Enterprise Australia promotes sustainable film business
A number of Australian government agencies have joined forces and recruited media management consultant Jonathan Olsberg from the UK-based Olsberg SPI to help Australian producers stop living a hand-to-mouth existence between productions and start developing sustainable businesses. Enterprise Australia has been adapted from similar programs held in the UK and ...
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Macquarie, Nine raise $13.6m for second production fund
Australians had reached into their pockets for $13.6m (A$20m) by the time the clock struck midnight on June 30, the deadline for investment in Macquarie Bank and the Nine Network's second film and television production fund. While they did not dig as deeply as last year, which saw $16m (A$23.6m) ...
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New Zealand introduces incentive for big budget films
The New Zealand Government has announced that producers who choose New Zealand as a location for their big budget projects will be handed back 12.5% of their production expenditure. Those spending $30m (NZ$50m) locally will automatically qualify for the grant, but if the local expenditure is $9m-$30m (NZ$15m-NZ$50m) it must ...
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Melbourne Film Office appoints Pitcher
Caroline Pitcher has been appointed general manager of the Melbourne Film Office, a role that gives her responsibility for enticing local and overseas producers to base their productions in the state of Victoria and for keeping them happy while they are there. "She brings with her a wealth of knowledge ...
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Melbourne film festival flies patriotic colours
The opening night of the 52nd Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) will feature the work of two hometown talents, Sue Brooks' Cannes competition feature Japanese Story and Adam Elliot's 22-minute claymation Harvie Krumpet.Japanese Story stars Toni Collette, Matthew Dyktynski and Gotaro Tsunashima in the Australian outback and was been picked ...
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The Spanish Apartment is the toast of Sydney
The French/Spanish film The Spanish Apartment, (aka L'auberge Espagnole/ Europudding) directed by Cedric Klapisch and produced by Bruno Levy for Ce Qui Me Meut, won both the PRIX UIP award for Best European Film and the audience award for best feature at the 50th Sydney Film Festival, which closed ...
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Australian film-makers fight for 'culture'
High-profile filmmaking couple Bryan Brown and Rachel Ward, and Australian Film Commission (AFC) chief executive Kim Dalton, met with 45 government backbenchers to argue that 'culture' should be excluded from a free trade agreement with the US. It was yet another attempt to prevent constraints being applied to Australian film ...
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New Zealand still examining tax incentives
Despite New Zealand's Economic Development Minister, Jim Anderton, stating that tax incentives are being seriously considered for the film industry, mixed messages are coming from the Government.According to today's issue of the NZ Herald, Anderton said the country was looking at a number of options including a model based on ...
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Nine films compete for Melbourne's FIPRESCI award
Three films from South Korea, three from Australia, two from Japan and one from China, all by debut directors, are competing for the 52nd Melbourne International Film Festival's FIPRESCI Award, director James Hewison announced today. From South Korea comes Byun Young-Joo's Ardor, Park Chanok's Jealousy Is My Middle Name, and ...
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Australian producers body to launch script market
The Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA) is to launch SPAAMart, an initiative aimed at presenting Australia's best scripts to potential production partners. SPAAMart will be part of the annual SPAA conference, which is being held from November 18 to 21 at Melbourne's new Centre for the Moving Image. ...
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Sydney fights to screen banned Ken Park
The Sydney Film Festival has approached both the State and Federal Government in the hope that Ken Park can be shown twice next week as scheduled, despite the Classification Review Board upholding the Office of Film and Literature Classification's refusal to classify the film.Australian film festivals do not ordinarily have ...
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Hopscotch jumps on Fahrenheit 911
Hopscotch has acquired all Australian and New Zealand rights for Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, making it one of the first English language distributors to officially board the new documentary. Moore has already begun to examine the history of anti-American terrorism, trace the business dealings between the Bush and bin Laden ...
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Dendy, Rialto empty their wallets at Cannes
Australia's Dendy Films picked up six titles while at Cannes including two from Renaissance, director John Curran's We Don't Live Here Anymore, starring the homegrown Naomi Watts alongside Laura Dern, and The Mother, another collaboration between Notting Hill director Roger Michell and controversial writer Hanif Kureshi. Curran's first film, Praise, ...
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Veteran producer appointed to stimulate Oz industry
Producer Ross Dimsey has been appointed general manager of industry development and investment at Film Victoria, one of Australia's biggest State Government film assistance agencies. He is a past president of the Screen Production Association of Australia and is a former director of Queensland's version of Film Victoria. His credits ...
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Trish Lake getting busy in Australia
With buzz building back home on her first credit, the unfinished Gettin' Square, Queensland-based producer Trish Lake is at Cannes with three projects. The most advanced is The Digger, which is being written by the mother/son/stepfather team of Jan Bradnam, Ashley Bradnam and Terry McCann.Babe director and co-writer Chris Noonan ...
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Australia's development agency and archives to merge
The film industry is generally perplexed by last night's surprise news that the Australian Government has decided to merge the Australian FilmCommission (AFC), which has the principal role of developing Australian films and film-makers, and Screensound, the organisation which collects and preserves the country's audiovisual heritage.Legislation will have to be ...
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Australia's Rialto swoops on Broken Wings
On the eve of the Cannes Film Festival, Rialto Entertainment has bought Australian and New Zealand rights for Broken Wings from Pathe. The film was Israel's best foreign film contender at this year's Academy Awards. Rialto principal Kelly Rogers describes the film, which he saw for the first time at ...
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Australia's FFC chief outlines new funding model
Six weeks into his new role as chief executive of Australia's Film Finance Corporation (FFC), Brian Rosen has called on local producers to make better use of his organisation's funds and to vary the ways they finance films. He also wants them to tell bigger stories that will attract the ...
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Dark Lady Of DNA could be follow-up film to Whale Rider
New Zealand's South Pacific Pictures (SPP) is developing a feature based on the book by Brenda Maddox about the life of Rosalind Franklin, whose work was essential to the discovery of DNA. The book, which is titled Rosalind Franklin, The Dark Lady of DNA, discusses how Franklin got no recognition ...