As well as helping the countless small businesses and shops who've lost stock and suffered damage, buying digital downloads from any of the indie companies who've lost all their stock in the huge depot fire in Enfield would be a nice thing to do. It might mean the difference for some between surviving or closing as they try to manage cashflow in the weeks or months it will take for the insurance to come thru, when many are already struggling. If you know of other companies, please let me know - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Below are the links to the main websites for each distributor I could find - they should of course also be available thru normal channels (LoveFilm, Amazon, iTunes, etc). Bear in mind if you're ordering DVDs there will probably a good wait for delivery - even better perhaps is if you say in the notes with your order that you are in no rush - and to preferably buy a download/stream. Update 1 -  Brendan Connelly at Bleeding Cool is also building a good list - worth checking as it has direct links to specific titles that can be downloaded/streamed Update 2 - Network DVD have taken their shop offline and promise it back within a few weeks. I'm not sure if this because of legal requirements to ship within 28 days of order, or if it will cause problems with their system. Either way perhaps a sign that it might be best not to buy DVDs from distributors before they've had a chance to either take off their shop or publish a statement. Update 3 - Artificial Eye and Human Film also confirmed. The Bleeding Cool list has lots more direct links and other distributors.  Arrow - ArrowFilms.co.uk to buy DVDs Artific .....

Amateur: barely a few letters from Auteur - but what, in our social media world, is the difference? If there was a dividing line of the 51st Krakow Film Festival, it was between the crowed-sourced YouTube world of Life in a Day and the personal journeys of documakers turning their lives and experiences into art. Less a debate between high and low art, as between the home movie and the knowingly crafted self-expose.  The journey of Daniela Creutz as her fiance arranged the wedding of his sister in Kashmir in Arranged Happiness. Thor Ochsner's award winning debut film 1989: When I was five years old, about the loss of his father in a tragic car crash as a child. Bente Milton and Mikkel Stolt's Second Life psychosis and recovery tale in My Avatar and Me (which demands its own review and discussion). 20 years of home movies for an Italian teenager-turned-IBM executive who reluctantly concedes to being the reincaration of a famous Buddhist lama, claiming a prince-like life as the guru to hundreds of thousands of Tibettans in Jennifer Fox's My Reincarnation (which just became the fourth highest earning film on Kickstarter). Wojciech Staroń's Argentinian Lesson - widely hailed as a masterpiece, picked up four prizes about transplanting his family to Argentina to teach Polish. All people turning their life and personal circumstances into art - a more informed version of something online video uploaders do every day, without the gala premieres. So, tho it was decried by some, Life In a Day, winner of the Audience Award, was an appropriate opener, I thought - like an extended trailer for the buffet of global human experience that the rest of the festival was serving up. It might have played a bit like an advert for an airline company (produced by one of Europe's biggest commercials companies, funded by Google) but it seemed to open the festival with that key question - who is a documaker? Is it simply the one with a camera who knows how to edit out the dross and emphasise the good .....

"All I can do is really beg you not to go this route" Michael Moore

Michael Moore, whose film Sicko highlighted the inefficiencies and unfairness in private healthcare, has warned that the changes are ‘absolutely the last thing you would want to do'.

In a passionate six minute tribute, he sounds warning bells over allowing private companies to dominate healthcare, as they are legally bound to generate the biggest possible profit for their shareholders. They only way then can do this is to provide less care, and what care they do provide, to do it as cheaply as possible.

"Abolishing slavery you were ahead of us. Giving women the vote, you were ahead of us - you've always been ahead of the curve here. Why would you want to fall behind the curve and follow a very broken, rotten, inhumane system makes absolutely no sense to me." 

He also warns that the wider social costs of healthcare reforms will be huge, pointing out that the biggest cause of bankruptcy and homelessness in the US is healthcare bills. In his video of support, Michael Moore, says:

“Speaking as an American to you, and in terms of what I have witnessed, as someone who has experience of this private system that we have, this (privatisation) is the absolute last thing that you want to do.

“You can watch my film and see so many examples of what happens when you let the private companies rule the system. They have a responsibility to their shareholders, in fact they legally are required to do everything they can to make as much money as possible for their shareholders, and if they don’t they can be brought up on charges. The whole system is set up to motivate them to everyday to say; how can we make more money off the sick?

“The best way to make more money off the sick is to provide them with as little care as possible; because care costs money. The way we (private companies) get to keep our money and send them out as profits to our shareholders is to provide very little care, and what care we give, make sure we spend as little on it as possible.”

“You will rue the day that you let this happen. We have so many problems; a broken, rotten inhumane system. If you keep growing the gap between the rich and the poor in your country, you are going to end up with more of the social problems like we have, that you don’t have to the same extent. So if you don’t like the current crime rate in the UK, just wait till you have enough people bankrupted and broken because of healthcare bills.

“All I can do is really beg you. Keep the good system that you have. Make it better.”

So, Digital and Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has backed MP Clare Perry's calls to create a firewall of Britain to support the seemingly reasonable aim of protecting children from pornography (and potentially keeping adults from materials classified under the Obscene Publications Act). With the web now moving further towards the TV, the suggestion is not much of a surprise. While it's tempting to dismiss it as an attempt for the government to filter the web so it can block a future Wikileaks - especially after Vaizey's Network Neutrality misfire - the discussion of how to deal with the difference between TV, where you can't say certain words before 9pm, and the web, which knows no limits, needs to take place. And as The Register - telling people to calm down - points out, Vaizey has suggested he doesn't want to legislate but wants to act as broker between industry and ISPs. Indeed Vaizey was cautious when the issue was first raised by Conservative MP Claire Perry in the Commons on November 23rd, afraid of what he called a 'Twitter Storm', but in yesterday's Sunday Times he said he wanted to see the ISP industry introduce measures soon. To recap what Perry was calling for: "I am asking for a change in regulation that would require all UK-based internet service providers to restrict universal access to pornographic material by implementing a simple opt-in system based on age verification." Yet - as anyone who understands the web's structure will know - there is no 'simple opt-in system'. So asides from the censorship problems of blocking entire websites - spelt out well by the Guardian today, which points out that sites like Flickr, YouTube, Blogger and Tumblr all have adult channels - is the practical fact that the kind of filtering Perry and Vaizey are calling for just has never been proven to work - indeed research below suggests it could slow down connections by up to 86% while wrongly blocking millions of child-safe websites, and letting millions more child-unsafe websites flood thru. There are three ways to crudely filter content by age: on websites themselves, putting responsibility on publishers;  in browsers, putting responsibility on parents and those who control the web connection;  and at ISP level, which requires the ISPs to track, review and filter all of their traffic thru some automated process. Vaizey pointed out to Perry in the commons debate .....

THE MOËT BRITISH INDEPENDENT FILM AWARDS ANNOUNCE NOMINATIONS AND JURY FOR 13th EDITION The nominations and jury members for the thirteenth annual Moët British Independent Film Awards were announced today, Monday 1st November at St Martins Lane, London by Jared Harris. The Film receiving the most nominations is The King’s Speech with eight, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and two Best Supporting Actor nominations.  Monsters, Never Let Me Go and The Arbor all received six nominations, Four Lions five and four nods went to Another Year, Made in Dagenham and Brighton Rock. Nominations for Best Actor go to Jim Broadbent (Another Year), Riz Ahmed (Four Lions), Colin Firth (The King’s Speech), Scoot McNairy (Monsters) and Aidan Gillen (Treacle Junior).  Leading ladies battling for the Best Actress are Manjinder Virk (The Arbor), Ruth Sheen (Another Year), Andrea Riseborough (Brighton Rock), Sally Hawkins (Made in Dagenham) and hoping to repeat last year’s success, Carey Mulligan (Never Let Me Go). Newcomer Gareth Edwards receives an impressive four nominations for his directorial debut Monsters; categories include Best British Independent Film sponsored by Moët & Chandon, Best Director, The Douglas Hickox Award for Best Debut Director and Best Technical Achievement. Both Andrea Riseborough (Brighton Rock) and Manjinder Virk (The Arbor) are nominated in two categories, Most Promising Newcomer and Best Actress, with The Arbor also competing for Best British Documentary alongside Enemies of the People, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Fire In Bablyon and Waste Land. The Raindance Award nominees for 2010 include Brilliant Love, Legacy, Son Of Babylon, Treacle Junior and Jackboots on Whitehall.  This Award honours exceptional achievement for filmmakers working against the odds, often with little or no industry support.  Elliot Grove, Founder Raindance Film Festival and BIFA added:  "The nominees for this year's Raindance Award show how vibrant and strong the state of independent film is in this country, despite the economic uncertainty. I am thrilled that we are able to support such great films, and know we'll see many more in the coming years" The Pre-Selection Committee of 70 members viewed nearly 200 films, out of which they selected the nominations, which were decided by ballot. The winners of The Moët British Independent Film Awards are decided by an independent jury compri .....

It's taken me a while to gather my thoughts about the Second Open Video Conference which took place at the start of October in New York. It featured a vast mix of people and organisations interested in the future of video online - from tech and web shapers to creatives and lawmakers - there's not many places where you can end up round the table with implementers from the W3C, the Firefox and Safari developer teams, the inventor of VLC and someone whose mashup has just been retweeted by John Cussack and got half a million views. Some background The first event in June 2009, came against the backdrop of the mass Iranian 'green wave' uprising. As the conference continued we could see first hand the importance of a free, open and impartial media space, as well as the importance of social media tools such as Twitter to share information and connect people. There was also buzz around the hopes for a royalty free video codec, Ogg Theora (just as web image formats jpg, png and gif are royalty free), while filesharing seemed certain to have changed the media landscape forever with filmmakers like Nina Paley explaining how she was staying afloat with a near-copyright-free model for her film Sita Sings the Blues. 15 months later and there's been some troubling moves. Britain has adopted the Digital Economy Act, France is already implementing HADOPI - both are 'three strikes and you're out' internet laws that will push the serious pirates into hidden and untracable proxy networks, while penalising with digital excommunication the casual or accidental downloader (or indeed anyone who shares a wifi connection with them), alienating and disconnecting the very audience indie filmmakers are desperate to engage with. The way such massive legislation was pushed through Parliament angered many of the copyright industry's former supporters and has been met with widespread condemnation through the tech, web and telecoms sector. While the LibDems said they would rescind the bill, it's been added to the many election pledges they've backtracked on. Google, meanwhile, appear to have also broken their word over network neutrality, at least on mobiles - breaking the internet's golden rule of 'all data is equal' by saying some data is more equal than others - if you're rich enough. Meanwhile the ACSLaw .....

For those in New York on Friday, the second Open Video Conference kicks off with a packed schedule including academics, makers (from Sally Potter and the Yes Men to Autotune the News and OK Go), enablers (Mozilla, Miro, the Workbook Project, Kaltura, Popcorn.js, etc) and others like the editor of Guardian.co.uk. For those not able to make it, there will be the world's first WebM stream of the event which we'll link to here. I feel very honoured to be in such company presenting a panel about the future of exhibition and cinema with Arin Crumley and Jon Reiss - both of whom have not only shot great independent features (Four Eyed Monsters and Bomb It, respectively) but self distributed them AND are each trying to help everyone else do the same through the recently open-sourced OpenIndie service and the Think Outside the Box Office book. I'm still hoping we will also be joined by one of the world's top rated VJs, but meantime here's the skinny: The Future of Exhibition - Opening the Box Office 3-3.45pm - October 1st, New York, Seminar Room 2, Fashion Institute of Technology: 7th Ave at 27th St If cinema going and exhibition is to filmmakers what gigs and concerts are to musicians - a live, unique experience that people are still happy to pay for - why is it a space so dominated by major media companies? And given the rapid technological shifts in film and videomaking, why has the film-going experience barely changed in 60 years? In this session we'll look at how people are taking exhibition into their own hands - from microcinemas and indie film clubs, to VJing and visual art, fan-driven screenings and audience interactivity, exploring how the future of exhibition goes way beyond the multiplex. Presenters:Arin Crumley, co-director of the breakout self-financed New York-set feature Four Eyed Monsters talks about how he created a groundbreaking release for his first film, and introduces his new platform, OpenIndie, funded by Kickstarter and offering a way for filmmakers to organise screenings outside of traditional cinemas. Jon Reiss, director of the self-distributed and produced graffiti documentary, Bomb It, and author of Think Outside the Box Office, looks at how producers are bypassing traditional gatekeepers to reach out to their audience while exploring the tools that are shaping this process. .....

This much I know: that while there are very bright people in both worlds, there are very few film industry people who really understand software development and web technology, and not that many coders who understand the film, TV and video industry.

At the intersection of these spaces is New York's Open Video Conference, now in its second year, and a vital meet-up, platform and debate-space for those working across both worlds. From Tommy Pallotta, the animator who introduced Richard Linklater to rotoscoping and went on to produce Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly to the creator of the VLC player. From Damien Kulash, lead singer of treadmill legends OK Go to Obama adviser and law professor Susan Crawford, from Mozilla Firefox to the Workbook Project's Lance Weiller. This year in the evenings there's also a Shared Film Festival, which will include the Yes Men presenting their latest film.

This crossover of law, business, civil rights, open media, anti-censorship, open source technology, and pure wow-factor geekery creates a gathering unlike any I've been to before: arriving last year for the first day I wondered around with glazed eyes. Surrounded by spirits I'd mostly only connected with thru online or a chance encounter - and had no idea there were so many people active in this space. These are the people who are battling to ensure that our media future isn't owned, controlled and mediated by a single giant corporation; if you share their vision you should get down there or watch the webcasts.

I will also be involved with a panel on the future of cinema and exhibition with some very special guests (more info to follow soon) so if you do make it the conference - come and say hello! Details of the schedule below.

Details of the surprise announcement about the axing of the UK Film Council amidst dozens of other arts quangos. 23.58 With the Facebook group inching towards 5,000 members, and the petition well over half that, the web is awash with comment and analysis. Andrew Pulver, Ronan Bennet and John Woodward all have pieces in the Guardian,  the BBC have rounded up some industry reactions and also put a few dozen UKFC short films to watch on Film Network. 18.05 The regional screen agencies are safe (for now), according to the DCMS in a quote published on Northern Media's website. 17.03 These Twitter streams are good places to keep up with latest developments and opinions: 'Film Council' and 'UKFC'. There's also a 'Save the UK Film Council' Facebook group and a petition. 15.31 Questions over - with hints that the axe may not have fully fallen and a clear sign that there will be further be consultations. 15.15 The DUP's Ian Paisley is asking about the UKFC. Jeremy Hunt replies: 'We have not announced a decision,  we have announced that we are considering doing this, as we want to hear everyone's views. The UKFC spent £3m on back office administration last year and we want to ask how that money could be better used to support filmmakers." 15.10 So that was a very brief statement. Nothing new learned. Except asking about England's 2018 World Cup campaign is 'a very good question'. 15.08 Now on to the World Cup 2018. What!?! 15.08 'Every penny to be spent frontline services and not on back office bureaucracy'.  15.06 'A brief statement'. Says Jeremy Hunt. Finally. He does use the phrase 'considering the closure of the UK Film Council' as if to say there is sti .....

Just found this, made me smile. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Revision as of 17:44, 16 December 2005 (edit) 86.133.150.154 (talk) ← Previous edit Revision as of 17:16, 20 December 2005 (edit) (undo) 192.18.1.5 (talk) (Serious copyvio removed, this is slightly better but still needs work) Next edit → (4 intermediate revisions not shown) Line 1: Line 1: - Apple Computer has applied for a trademark on the term 'Vingle'. + A '''vingle'' is a [[portmanteau]] of ''video'' and ''single''. The [[neologism]] refers to [[music video]]s .....