From Holler PR:

Channel 4 today announces that as part of the upcoming New Talent Month, viewers will be offered the opportunity to write an entire episode of hit teen drama Hollyoaks. For the very first time, aspiring writers have the chance to put words into the mouths of the Hollyoaks cast and see their work come to life on screen. The competition is designed to seek out the most promising new drama writing talent in the UK.

Entrants are tasked with scripting four scenes based on an old storyline and from these a winner will be selected. They will be given exclusive access to future Hollyoaks storylines, get commissioned to write a full show and work with the production team to get their script on air.  

Director Sophie Muller was given $150,000 to make a music video for Sarah McLachlan. Instead she spent $15 and gave the rest to the causes outlined in the resulting film. This was actually made in 2004 so is hardly news, but only now with the wonder of the web does has this come to wider (er, our) attention.

As Ricky Gervais' celebrity-culture bashing (and brilliant) Extras finale scores 5.3m viewers, Blur and Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn - as a guest editor on the BBC Today programme - has called for celebrity culture to be "dismantled". The cry comes as a recent in-house poll suggests the public are tired of the BBC's focus on celebrity and reality TV, after a year in which the Corporation was criticised for paying 'stars' such as Jonathan Ross £18m for a three year deal, while making thousands of news and current affairs staff redundant.

The current celebrity culture "sends out all the wrong messages" Albarn said. "It's creating a mindset that suggests you can getsomething for nothing and that it's easy to acquire status and fame,"he told BBC Radio 4. "It should be one of the hardest things to do."

"At some point in the very near future we are going to have to change our value system so dramatically, and what we deem as important and what we throw away," he said.

From PR Holler:

There is exciting news on the cards for all Skins fans out there. Series II is coming to E4 in February 2008 and E4 have just announced a very special competition for fans to get busy with...The Skins II Creative Challenge.

In the build up to series 1, fans were set some challenges on E4.com and they were overwhelmed by the response -mainly because of all the other weird, wacky and wonderful Skins stuff fans created which had nothing to do with the 4 challenges! From fansites to animations to comic books - it was great.

To celebrate Unveiled: Love and Sex in the Arab World on a season of critically-acclaimed films offering a fresh perspective on life in North Africa and the Middle East on More4 this Christmas, More4 is offering Netribution users a change to win a digital camera and it couldn't be easier to enter. 

news in from filmmaka of an interesting competition:

Filmaka are offering a chance to direct a promo for at least £5k, if you go to their site, upload 2 minutes of footage you have made plus a pitch for the new Unkle song 'Restless' (which is on the site). The deadline is 17th December so get cracking...

From Holler: 

This Christmas, in Unveiled: Love and Sex in the Arab World, More4 offers a fresh perspective on life in North Africa and the Middle East with a season of critically-acclaimed films.

Danielle Arbid's Un Homme Perdu, follows a French photographer's life-changing journey through Jordan. In Satin Rouge, a widowed Tunisian seamstress embarks on a journey of self-discovery among the exotic nightclub netherworld of belly dancers and cabaret patrons. El Banate Dol is an observational documentary about adolescent girls living on the streets of Cairo amid violence and oppression. What a Wonderful World from Morocco sees a hired killer fall in love with a woman he regularly speaks to on the phone but has never met.And Viva Algeria tells the story of three very different women in the Algiers during the winter of 2003. Holed up in a hotel since the start of the violence, the women refuse give up hope or abandon their lives. Catch Un Homme Perdu on More4 on Saturday 22^nd December at 11pm   Satin Rouge on Tuesday 25 December at 10pmEl Banate Dol on Thursday 27 December at 10.30pmWhat A Wonderful on Friday 28 December at 11pmViva Algeria on Saturday 29^th December at 11pm

Here's your chance to make your mark on the new series of Shameless. We're asking you to create a design that will end up featured as a piece of graffiti on the set of the Chatsworth Estate.

Entering is easy. All you need to do is follow the steps below. 

Step 1: Create a design. This can be a hand drawn sketch or something you've on your computer using photoshop, illustrator, etc.  Just remember it's going to end up as a piece of graffiti!

Step 2: Alternatively you can create a design using any easy to use online application. For example see the links below...

Graffiti Creator - http://www.graffiticreator.net

Grafitti Playdo - http://graffiti.playdo.com 

Step 3: Email in jpeg of your final design (along with your contact details) to shamelessgraffiti@channel4.co.uk

For more information visit www.channel4.com/shameless

Leeds' (and the north of England's) premier AV pioneers looknlisten are heading Back to Cool (sorry) with a grafiti styled event for early September. 

First up is a return to their residency at the reform bar on 2nd september, featuring a massive range of graffiti influenced visuals, inspired by the recent rumba caracas graffiti jam. The night kicks off with a selection of classic films charting the history of graffiti and it’s various cultures and styles. Reflecting the strong links between graff and music, they will be breaking out some choice graff influenced music videos, including the awesome mark ronsons version of just (see below), with the dancing graffiti video.

On top of this, as if to prove they've not been idle all summer, visuals from dave lynch and 273 curse make use of footage shot during the doodle sessions in the green room at moorfest, and the full on piece work at the recent graffiti jam. all chopped up and reassembled to accompany dj airplays hip hop selection.

After 16 weeks in solitary confinement, Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist held hostage in the Gaza Strip since March, has been released. Watching him now in the press conference, it's hard to imagine the kind of wise soul it takes to survive such an ordeal and be so articulate and honourable in the aftermath.

"It's hard to believe how amazing it is to be free"

Leeds-based filmmaker Mohamed Al Daradji has returned to Baghdad, where he shot his Oscar-shortlisted debut feature Ahlaam, screening it to over a 1000 locals and politicans at the national cinema. The journey has been documented by the filmmaker and is currently showing on Al Jazeera UK on Sky (details below).

"It's about human stories... The Iraqi people change from being just a number used by the media as a way to fill out the news to becoming normal human beings."
Mohamed Al Daradji

Ahlaam, from Northern production company Human Film has been highly praised throughout its festival run, and is one of the more remarkable independent filmmaking stories of recent years. Daradji, inspired to film in Iraq following a dream he had after watching  BBC News, on a micro-budget used a cast and crew of largely untrained Iraqis to recreate both pre- and mid-war Baghdad to tell the story of three Iraqis left to survive in an asylum during the 'shock and awe' campaign. Kidnapped by both the insurgents and the US military (who each accused him of being a stooge of the other), Mohamed worked on set with a machine gun in one hand and camera in the other and was almost executed in his attempts to bring this heartbreaking human story to screen.

While support in the UK has been slow, news has emerged in recent weeks that director Antonio Bird (Face, Ravenous, The Hamburg Cell) is to produce Daradji's next film Umm Hussein, which follows a mother across Iraq as she searches for her son. The project has already been selected for the Sundance writers lab. Post production on Shooting In Iraq, which documents the  story of the making of Ahlaam, is also moving ahead, which has to be one of the most eagerly awaited behind the scenes since Eleanor Coppola's Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse. In further good news Human Film have announced that the Ahlaam will be released in France, Spain and the UK later this year. We hope to publish an interview with Mohamed, conducted earlier in the year, very soon.

Trip of Dreams is showing on Al Jazeera, Sky Channel 514 on Wednesday 6th June 00:30, 11:30, 20:30; Thursday 7th June 05:30, 19:30; Friday 8th June 03:00, 16:30; Saturday 9th June 06:30 

Apparently 150 billion cubic metres of gas are burnt off every year - enough gas to power the United States for three months. Even worse - the 390 million tonnes of carbon dioxide released while doing this is more than the reduction of CO2 emissions from many of the carbon offseting projects of the Koyoto protocol. Nigeria alone burns off enough gas to power half of Africa for a year. Writer, producer and director (and co-author of the first funding book), Caroline Hancock, has just completed a documentary on the subject and apparently almost got shot when shooting in Nigeria. While the screening on BBC World has passed it may well appear online at some point or be replayed on the channel - and either way sounds like a pretty important contribution to an ever more urgent problem.

The flaring and venting of Natural Gas is wasting valuable resources and contributing to climate change. The World Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Reduction partnership estimates that 150 billion cubic metres of gas are burnt off or ‘flared’ every year – enough to supply the whole of the United States for three months. Gas flaring and venting also puts 390 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year – more than the reduction of CO2 emissions from all the projects currently registered under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism. A new programme in TVE’s Earth Report series goes to Russia and Nigeria to assess the scale of the problem and to examine possible solutions.
 

It was a comedy classic that amassed a cult following and scooped six Baftas, only to be shelved for two decades. Now, as the BBC finally contemplates Tutti Frutti's return, the original cast members have branded the broadcaster's decision to run it on BBC4 a disgrace.

Described by one cast member as the best series ever made in Scotland, the six-part comedy drama which propelled Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson to stardom has been aired just once since it first appeared in 1987.

A new series of documentary films from Maverick Television is about to air on Channel 4 that takes disability into new creative directions. The show, New Shoots, airs at 8.25 on Sunday mornings, repeated at 5.40am Saturdays, presenting 12 debut documentaries all coming from disabled directors. The first run of the show begins on Sunday 8^th April.

Across the series New Shoots will watch breakdance crews battling it out on the dance floor, explore the personal stories of children living with pain, investigate the emotional consequences of knife crime and meet couples who have made wiold monkeys part of their families.  

The future of the UK's largest animation studio looks safe after signing a three year deal with Sony. The Dreamworks deal had put the previously autonomous wunderkids under the thumb of Jeffrey Katzenberg, whose West Coast style seemed to jar with the West Country outfit. Rumours abounded about this clash of cultures, so when it fell through earlier this year, it seemed like it could be a good thing provided they weren't left without a major backer. Sony, who made Billy Connolly a squirrel  in their first animated feature last year, will hopefully be more sensitive to the Aardman sensibility. 

UK TV Drama Under Heavy Attack

Award-winning writer Paul Abbott has continued his pressure on broadcasters, with a demand they commission more single films on television.  Ironically, his call comes as both Channel 4 and BBC1 are cutting back on drama.

According to The Stage newspaper, Abbott, the outspoken creator of Channel 4's hit series Shameless, which follows the lives of the dysfunctional Gallagher family on a sink estate in Manchester and has won popular and critical acclaim, said that the reluctance to make screenplays was a problem for the UK.

Abbott warned: "If someone has a brilliant idea for a 90-minute film, they go to the UK Film Council, get funding and release it as a cinema-release film, instead of as TV film. The BBC rarely pays for TV films anymore."

 The E STINGS competition 2007

Yes, we're doing it again. The annual opportunity to weird us out with your crazed imaginations is here once more as E4 and Creative Review proudly present E STINGS 4. "The E STINGS competition has become something of an E4 institution," says E4 head of on-air, Neil Gorringe. "It's fantastic to see what people can get up to with our logo." The big difference this year is that we want you to create stings not just for E4 but also for E4 Music. "Since it launched in the 6am-2pm slot in August 2005, E4 Music has been a great success for the channel. People are watching E4 round the clock," says Channel 4 and E4 marketing executive Peter Spiers, "and since E4 Music shares the same brand values as E4, we think it deserves its own E STINGS.

Former US Vice-President Al Gore was in London yesterday for the British launch of the cable channel that he co-founded with entrepreneur Joel Hyatt in 2005, with the aim of "democratising the medium of television."

Current TV is the first channel where one-third of the channel's programming is supplied (and voted for) by the audience.

E4 and Creative Review present E STINGS 4, the annual opportunity to use your imagination.

"The E4 competition has become something of an institution" says E4 head of on-air, Neil Gorriinge. "It's fanstastic to see what people can get up to with our Logo" The big difference this year is that E4 want you to create stings not just for E4 but also for E4 music .

"Since it launched in the 6am -2pm slot in August 2005, E4 Music has been a great success for the channel. People are watching E4 round the clock", says Channel 4 and E4 marketing executive Peter Spiers. "and since E4 Music shares the same brand values as E4 we think it deserves it's own E4 STINGS.

"We don't want to be overzealous, a lot of the material on YouTube is good promotional content for us"
Ashley Highfield

BBC clips - including The Mighty Boosh, Faulty Towers and Planet Earth - will finally be available in an embeddable, flash player for people to put in their blogs and websites legally after the broadcaster announced today a substantial deal with YouTube.

 Creating two entertainment channels and a news channel, the pages will carry Google AdSense advertising in all countries (including the UK), with revenues shared with the Beeb. The clips - which would not include full length content - may also include video advertising at the start. Oddly, the news channel, which will have around 30 items a day will include advertising and as a result not be viewable in the UK.