If it is clear that the producer wants the product on as many websites as possible, would market forces really create competition amongst filmsites or encourage them to scramble to pay money upfront in return for the "privilege" to sell the movie?" If you thought the biggest threat facing the international film business was piracy, think again. The creation of a single g…

The beaches of Goa are a bit like the United Nations, so many pepople from around the world, so many ambassadors of peace. They mostly seem lovely wise souls who will probably one day run companies and countries. Meanwhile in the US a very real battle continues, the ultimate in a way. And it is a battle which - if the Clintons push it too hard, could perhaps split the Democratic party…

From Glasgow-based Phase IV, behind the long gestating Simulation feature, comes an interview with Mark Gorzynski, Silhouette Technician behind Eon Production's Quantum of Solace, who speaks about his work, his family and silhouilmaking. [video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO3hg_tEVgk 600x400]

"This is a short film about my job as a Projectionist. I am quite proud of this film, mostly because I’m so proud of my job – it seems like a fulfilment of my childhood romantic notions of what I wanted to be when I grew up. Nonetheless what it most discernibly omits is how truly magnificent all the other staff are who work there too. It is dedicated to the other projectio…

Writer, actor, director, conscientious objector, uncompromising activist and - by all accounts - much loved and utterly decent person, Harold Pinter was not just a great contributor to our times, but a real inspiration. In the below video he talks about art, truth, politics and the Iraq war, as he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literatrue in 2005. {myspace}2574205{/myspace} "the…

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick on the film of the same name, has also died at his home in Sri Lanka.Clarke served in the&nbs…

  Bader Ben Hirsi could make quite a screenplay out of his experience directing the first feature film ever made in Yemen, the ancient land at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. His results though, have impressed the Arab world, who are bound to be his sternest critics. Ben Hirsi's film has just scooped the Grand Prize at the Cairo Film Festival. James MacGregor, who has spent ma…

Similar to the 'video essay' Iran a Nation of Bloggers by Kate Tremills at the Vancouver Film School,  comes this effective new short animation/essay, Wake Up, Freak Out – then Get a Grip, from Leo Murray and the Royal College of Art about the planetary tipping point. From his website : It’s much, much later than you think This really isn’t about polar bear…

I stumbled across some of my old writing still online on Netribution from over two decades years ago that was so bad I wanted to cancel myself before anyone else had a chance to. I was scrolling down my old year 2001 design for old raw HTML Netribution pages untouched in 20 years, and still looking much like it did then (other than screens are much bigger so there's a lot of left/right padding)…

The low budget digital film making revolution is sweeping the industry like a big brush. But in this case the brush is made of pixels, ones and zeros as opposed to the usual brush construction of celluloid, photosensitive dyes and developing chemicals. One of the leading exponents of this 'Cinema Electronique' is Dutch auteur Hans Von Looz. His films such as, 'Breaking My Patience', 'The Nutters…

So that's it then, four years to the day almost, since issue 99 went out, so it's been a while.With this new architecture it has not been too bad. Not a lot of midniht oil burning, although Nic looks to be a little jet-lagged when it gets to tea-time.There's no chance of Netribution losing its non-London centricity either, since our cotributors are well spread from the Smoke to the Shetland Islan…

Jon H from Finland at JonHs.net has pulled together a remarkable list of 9-11 related documentaries online. All are free to watch and most are created by unfunded groups and individuals. There's a few extreme conspiracy theories but it's is still an impresive collective example of citzen filmmaking. So much seems to have happened in the five years since Tom ran up the stairs…

unicorn chaser

The opposite of Ultimate Improv's NYC Grand Central Station freeze, with a wink to T-Mobile's Liverpool Street Station antics. To promote a Flemish reality TV show.

Producers are different things to different people, making this question difficult to answer. There are no detailed job descriptions and no two producers handle their jobs in exactly the same way. Is it any wonder that  both audiences, and many 'insiders', are bewildered by the proliferation of producer credits in films? The producer credit has often…

  Jon Williams and his creative team spent in excess of two years crafting their underground comedy Diary of a Bad Lad and a further year taking it through post, producing a film that many film luminaries have acknowledged to be fresh, original and different. After getting endorsement for their product from people like Chris Bernard, Alex Cox and Nik Powell, you would think th…

Last year I built the website for a new documentary due to premiere this year about the issue of land-grabbing in Africa. I'd first been introduced to the production team at an remarkable week as part of the Swim Lab, and been struck silent as the director, Joakim Demmer, explained in plain terms how while we are sending billions in aid to countries like Ethiopia, we are also, inadvertently, he…

With a new chair this year in the shape of Scotsman, Alex Graham, presiding over a delegate list now 2,500 in number and Aussie Heather Croall still proving to be an assured hand in the Director’s role, Sheffield Doc/Fest 2012 is still on a steady and upward trajectory. Funding and making docs is tough territory but in these financial anni horribili the festival itself succeeded in not only keepi…

2006 was certainly a year of trailer mashups. To quote the Misshaken Pictures' Mashifesto: "As our collective history burrows deeper into the digital coalface we begin to see it recombined, re-imagined, re-invented and e-rased. Heirachies of media code are becoming silly putty in the hands of the majority and the global mirror increases at an unprecedented rate, a miasma of Id…

Sheffield Documentary Film Festival wound up on Sunday, with a brief interlude before the Scottish Documentary Film Institute hosts the Edinburgh Pitch on Tuesday and prior to the Edinburgh Film Festival officially kicking off on Wednesday. Filmtastic week. As was probably part of the rational to shift Sheffield to June (which it has wanted to do for almost 4 years), many of the commissioners who…

How Do I Sell My Film Part One - DEMOGRAPHICS Netribution and film distributors WYSIWYG have joined forces to present on-line WYSIWYG's essential Guide to Film Distribution. We're both interested in building a strong industry for independent filmmakers. This means creating films that people want to see and buy. It does not mean sacrificing creative integrity, but it means business. To do the b…

If you want to meet documentary filmmakers from around the globe, Sheffield Documentary Film Festival is the place to be. The 17th year of the event kicked off on Wednesday evening with the UK premier of Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. Interviewed yesterday by the chair of the Festival, Steve Hewlett, Ms Rivers replied to the loaded question - ‘why did she make the film?’ – with the pithy, ‘because…

Have a slightly madver 2008