After three years of discussions that looked like they may never end, the UK-India film co-production agreement is finally set. Both governments have completed negotiations which began after Tessa Jowell signed the main body of the agreement in 2005. In recent, years more and more Indian films have used locations in the UK, with the new agreement allowing such producers to access UK tax relief - and other benefitis - on local production spending if eligible as a co-production.

Likewise numerous British filmmakers such as Alex Snelling, Ashwin Kumar and Arun Kumar have shot films in India in recent years, and will now be able to get Indian support when partnering with local companies. The Indian film industry is the most productive in the world, while 2.5 million Brits went to see Hindi films last year, with the market making up 16% of all realeases. 

As a direct result of the treaty the government expects that up to 10 UK-Indian co-productions will be made within the first two years. Indian films can qualify as British by meeting the requirements of one of the following: an official UK bilateral co-production treaty; the European Convention on Cinematographic Co-production; or the Cultural Test.

As part of the introduction of the treaty, UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) will run a series of workshops for Indian filmmakers who are interested in co-producing with the UK and making use of the treaty. The four UKTI workshops will aim to provide all those involved  – the national bodies, trade associations, individual production companies and professional advisers – with a better understanding of how the treaty will work and how potential co-producers can benefit from the same.

This in from Tamsin at MayaVision:

Producers or production companies are now invited to send a rough cut of their unfinished short film to Maya Vision International, along with a completed application form. The closing date is Friday 30^th May 2008.

If you don’t have a rough cut by then, don’t worry as the Completion Fund has expanded to 2 calls per year allowing up to 14 short films to be completed under the scheme each year. The next call, 2009/I, is scheduled to open in September 2008, but full details to follow in due course.

Please pass the news on to all your filmmaking friends. We’d love to receive a bumper crop of exciting new films and look forward to seeing your entries! Full guidelines, forms and more information can be found at:

http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/shortfilm

You are very welcome to call for more details, but please read the guidelines first! Contact: Tamsin Ranger at Maya Vision International Ltd, 3^rd Floor, 6 Kinghorn St, London EC1A 7HW tel: 0207 796 4842 or email: completion@mayavisionint.com http://www.mayavisionint.com 

Star Wreck Studios, the guerilla filmmaking collective behind one of the most popular Finnish films of all time - and a big success story of online film distribution - have unveiled a teaser trailer for their follow up, Iron Sky, and are asking fans to help fund and produce the film.

Star Wreck : In The Pirkinning was produced by five friends in a two-room flat in Tampere with a small budget and the support of a few hundred fans and dozens of acquaintances. From the land of Linus Torvald, creator of open source (and world changing) Linux, the film is appropriately released under a Creative Commons license - Laurence Lessig's attempt to bring open source practices to other IP. The film was released in 2005 and was subsequently picked up by Universal Pictures for distribution across Scandinavia and screened on State TV in Finland, Belgium and Italy. Viewed online or downloaded more than 8 million times, Star Wreck has become, the filmmakers argue, the most popular Finnish film of all time. With virtual sets and Hollywood quality CGI effects, the films production values have been widely acclaimed, with the only criticism being that it's a Trekkie fan-film rather than an original concept.

“Iron Sky is a story about conformity: those who want to conform, those who want to make others conform, and those who refuse to conform.”
Timo Vuorensola
Iron Sky looks set to change that with an ultra-high concept futuristic space thriller. The premise is simple - in 1945 the Nazis left to the dark side of the moon, where they hid out rebuilding their forces. In 2018, they come back. A trailer appeared online this week (below) following a thirteen-part behind the scenes vlog . Under a 'Buy War Bonds' shoutout, the producers are currently inviting fans to pre-buy the DVD and a making of book in a special edition pack for €50, a kind of micro-pre-sales made popular by the likes of Brave New Films and Franny Armstrong . Tho committed to using open source principles, creating the excellent looking WreckAMovie community (currently in beta) for collaborative task management, the producers are yet to promise Iron Sky will be a free download, saying they are currently exploring all options. Tho if they make enough in micro-presales, they won't need to pre-sell any territorial rights to traditional distributions, which in theory would allow the film to  come out under a Creative Commons license. Watch this space...

The Scottish games developers behind the highly controversial yet critically acclaimed Grand Theft Auto IV: Liberty City have announced first week sales of $500m, on over six million copies. The figure - with $310 on the first day - not only sets a record for video games, beating Microsoft's Halo 3, but surpasses that of any entertainment product, with the violent-crime-pays game also boosting flagging sales of the Playstation 3 and XBox consoles by up to 50% in the week.

It's a long way from Lemmings - the try-to-save-as-many-lives-as-you-can game - which brought the developers to prominence in the early 90s. Then based in Dundee and called DMA, the studio was approached by Nintendo to be part of the 'dream team' for the launch of the N64, but ended up in 'development hell' on their N64 title, Body Harvest, so turned their attention to creating the first Grand Theft Auto for the PC. It was a similar fusion of driving game with roleplay narrative, except the body harvesting aliens were replaced with more straightforward criminals and joyriders.

A series of acquisitions has left Rockstar North under the ownership of Take Two Interactive, who in turn are currently under a hostile takeover bid from video games giant EA, trying to buy them for $2billion. But the developers of Grand Theft Auto - and other controversial titles such as Bully (be a school bully) and Manhunt (be a, erm, mass murderer) are still based in the UK, with offices in in Edinburgh and Leeds.

For its blend of sex and violence in high-rendered 3D, the Trainspotting of the video-game world has received wide criticism and calls from conservative Christian attorney Jack Thompson in the US to ban the game, who even took to writing to the mothers of Take Two's executive board pleading for them to make their sons act. The ability to not just pick up prostitutes in the game, but to run them over, maim and kill them after virtual sex has caused widespread concern, especially with the game released in the same week that the new UK Criminal Justice Bill made it illegal to own images that contain "an act which threatens or appears to threaten a person's life" in a sexual context (one also wonders if this will apply to Basic Instinct and Bond film GoldenEye). 

The publishers argue that it is up to the players to decide what they do in each game - it provides the means for players to runover countless civilians, or attack prostitutes, but it is their choice. Furthermore, they say that the game has received unparalleled high critical acclaim with many reviewers describing it as the game of the decade, and some pointing out psychological maturity with the main character become increasingly unsatisfied with his brutal lifestyle as the game continues. Either way, with the breathtaking graphics pushing the genre closer to reality, the critics are unlikely to move on, any more than the film industry is likely to stand back from a sector which makes so much money, and is largely free from piracy (in consoles, at least). Steven Spielberg just last week announced details of his first collaboration with EA - Boom Blox - a kind of tennis-meets-Jenga game for the Wii (pictured).

Those concerned that the movement of the Edinburgh Film Festival from its August spot would mean a shortage of quality titles may need to hold their breath as the festival unveiled it's 2008 lineup today. There are 15 World Premieres at the festival, including Vito Rocco's My Movies Mashup winner FaintHeart, Duane Hopkins’ Better Things, Terence Davies’ Cannes Entry, Of Time and City, 90s Nostalgia piece and Sundance hit, with Ben Kingsley as a stoned shrink, The Wackness, Martin Raddich's hotly awaited Crack Willow and The New Ten Commandments, a series of short films marking the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights directed by a lineup of new filmmakers including Irvine Welsh, Mark Cousins and Tilda Swinton.

Other treats include a screening of Pixar's latest Wall-E, on the same days as its US release, Shane Meadow's Somers Town, Errol Morris' Abu Ghraib expose Standard Operating Procedure, Werner Herzog's documentary Encounters at the End of the World, the new Under the Radar strand, and masterclasses from Errol Morris, Ray Harryhausen, Roger Deakin and Brian Cox. Full press release follows.

After being inspired by John Waters’ visit to the Edinburgh International Film Festival during 2007, EIFF Artistic Director Hannah McGill has announced a new strand of cult films for 2008’s edition. 

Under The Radar will play host to films that ‘deploy low budgets to imaginative effect and range from being variously kitsch, gory, disturbing and hilarious.’ Casting its net wider than simply horror/sci-fi/fantasy – which the EIFF had previously catered for with such strands as Night Moves – the selection aims to ‘break boundaries of both art and entertainment, drawing in elements of experimental video and gallery art as well as subversive comedy and extreme genre cinema’.

The trailer for the 63rd festival, made up of 1,000 stills and created by O Street and Pete Dibdin is previewed below: 

It’s not often that you hear a director ask an actor, “Can we get a few grunts from you? Can you just get that grunting? Okay, now how about some heavy breathing? And where’s Zombie Number Two? We need you!” So begins a hectic day of filming a five-minute thriller for the Sci-Fi-London 48-hour Film Challenge.  

Director Vicki Psarias , who won last year’s 4Talent Best Filmmaker award, is asking actor Chris Rogers – playing “a strange man” – to re-record some sound. The planes flying overhead, the dismal weather and the lack of a sound monitor have made things a little more difficult than usual. The team only have a few more hours to shoot out in the forest by Barnes station in south-west London, as the next day will be devoted to editing.

One of the more promising schemes to come out of the UK Film Council in recent years, the Development Fund's programme for first-time filmmakers has made its first awards to creatives and projects reflecting the fund’s stated aims to open up opportunities for budding writers and filmmakers across the UK. The first set of awardees includes three writers who are completely new to the industry.

The programme aims to identify and support emerging filmmakers: screenwriters, writer/directors and writer, director, producer teams who have not made a feature film or who have not yet had a feature film released theatrically or broadcast on UK television, whilst also fostering talent that has already made a mark in shorts or other media.  In addition to providing financial support, the programme also includes mentors, with Simon Beaufoy, Ayub Khan Din and Pawel Pawlikowski already lined up. Details of the first six winners, whose awards averaged £10k, after the read more link.

A quick roundup of recent award winners 

We're pleased to hear that Alexander Snelling's debut feature Tantric Tourists, covered here recently, picked up the Best UK Debut at the East London Film Festival, where it had its Gala Premiere.  

Mike Rymer's 15k short Sick, dealing with mental illness, has picked up the Gold award at the 41st Houston Film Festival. Endorsed by the Samaritans, the film looks at anxiety and depression and was funded almost entirely by NHS charitable trusts after development at the Wales Screen Academy.

Meanwhile the winner of online community Filmaka 's web contest has been anounced as I Refuse to Forget by 21-year-old Nuru Rimington-Mkal. The tender tail of sensory memories of love won acclaim from Jury member Neil LaBute. Nuru will now, apparently, get to direct his own feature, funded by Filmmaka. Next year's contest, with the prize of getting a feature produced, has been announced with the theme of 'Behind Closed Doors'. 

"Investors fleeing Wall Street's mortgage-related strife plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into grain futures, driving prices up even more."
Washington Post

So its official. The UN anounced Monday that food speculators were mostly to blame for the recent surge in food prices. Agrofuels and changes to diet no-doubt have a part to play, but as Vietnam moved to stop panic buying at the weekend, with the Prime Minister stating that food supplies for the country were more than adequate , its clear that markets have been artificially inflating prices. A special meeting of the heads of the UN's agencies, along with the WTO and World Bank has been called in Bern for later in the week to discuss sollutions to the crisis.

Since I started researching the subject , a couple of in-depth articles have appeared in the Washington Post and BusinessWeek/Spiegel Online. It’s good to see that not only have two instituions of the conservative press picked up on the story (finally) but  that they join the likes of hedge fund head George Soros (who ran the US’s second most profitable fund last year) in describing the speculation as a sympton of unfettered capitalism gone too far.
My flatmate from Oxfam did point out to me that higher food prices had an upside – the impoverished farmers, many of whom have faced tough tough years (like in India where suicide amonst small farmers is very high), would be seing increased income. If the money is shifting from the miners of precous metals to impoverished farmers, it can't be all bad. It makes sense as an argument, but not if it’s at the expensive of mass starvaion – otherwise we’ll see a return to feudal systems with rich landowners supporting the people working the fields who can barely afford the produce they grow.

We were chatting the other night about how the Death Star, for all its evil genius as a total killing machine, was really badly designed. I mean from a defensive point of view – a huge open port, with no gun turrets inside, leading to a big self destruct button. And Darth, despite all his Jedi training, is a pretty lousy pursuer of Luke.

So we wondered if, at the end of Episode 3, aware that the Emporer is set to win, and that not much can be done about this, he reisgns to a life inside a giant gimp suit while secretly making plans to allow it all to come crashing down when the time comes, knowing that his son would one day come to avenge his death.

I await the calls of derision from proper fans, but meantime, keep this thought in your mind as you watch the latest Darth Vadar film doing the rounds.