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News stories from Jan 2006 to 2012..

  • 19 May 2009
    Distribution

Milk, Chocolat and Pi as the Co-Op moves into the film business

Finally some exciting news out of the Croisette - Britain's fifth largest retailer, the UK's biggest farmer and the world's biggest seller of fair trade, non-animal tested and ethically sourced products and services, the Co-Op, is moving into film distribution, starting with the hotly awaited docs Burma VJ and The Vanishing of the Bees. We often lament in my flat the march to sell out, that has seen the loss of once exclusively Fair Trade Green and Blacks to Cadburys, Pret…
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15 April 2007

Hull Feedback: Visual Howl and Reflexive Music

  Hull Film, in association with Seeds And Bridges, will return on Thursday 19th April with FEEDBACK: VISUAL HOWL AND REFLEXIVE MUSIC a dynamic series of short films to be screened at Hull Screen. With Jimi Hendrix and the early soundtracks of Dr Who being the best some of the best k…
13 September 2006

YouTube's top vlog turns out to be LA filmmaking trio

"We did this with zero resources. Anybody could do what we did" It was only a matter of time. LonelyGirl15, the most subscribed channel on YouTube - whose very username suggests nubile illicit desperation - has been revealed to actually be an 20- year old New Zealand actress Je…
29 July 2010

Garrick Hamm's New Short Enters Two Prestigious US Film Festivals

from publicist Marek Steven British director Garrick Hamm’s new short film The Man Who Married Himself has been selected for two prestigious US film festivals this summer. The first of these is the LA Shorts Fest which has just started this July. This particular Festival has an uncanny knack of s…
  • 24 April 2006
    TV

NAB Highlights TV Distribution Revolution

  NAB, the world's biggest electronic media convention is spotlighting the distribution revolution as broadcasters embrace broadband, from internet protocol television to podcasting. With the switch to digital and high definition no longer making headline the new forms of distribution are now attracting attention, an in particular Internet Protocol Television IPTV.    Broadband is now high on the programme agenda, with Kevin Corbett of Intel de…
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30 July 2007

Brits Up For Venice Awards

  British films by directors Kenneth Branagh, Ken Loach and Peter Greenaway are in competition for the top prize at this year's Venice Film Festival. British and US films dominate this year's selection, with Atonement, starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, previously ann…
23 March 2006

Guiding Lights Mentor Film's Rising Stars

Top names from the world of filmmaking are taking on a new mentoring role to help support the next generation of UK film talent. Guiding Lights pairs established names, including writer  and producer Michael Kuhn, with 26 of the hottest new talents in the UK for 12 months of mentoring, advic…
03 June 2006

Cannes Winner Loach To Put Gangmasters In The Frame

Just days after winning one of cinema's top prizes, controversial director Ken Loach is turning his attention to gangmasters for his next film, which will shoot in Scotland this autumn. Loach won the Palme d'Or last weekend at the Cannes Film Festival for The Wind that Shakes the Barley…
  • 14 November 2008
    Film

Biju viswanath's new feature film Marathon

"Marathon displays the resolve, discipline and courage of two human beings running for their lives, qualities that can sustain us all in life's marathon." Acclaimed director, Biju Viswanath, featured previously here on Netribution, writes in with news of his adaptation of Richard Harteis' non-fiction work, Marathon. With a screenplay by Celia de Fréine, Marathon is a tale of courage, endurance, and finally, the triumph of love. Marathon expl…
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03 June 2006

Global Audience To Glimpse Red Road

  The low-budget Scots movie that scooped a prestigious award at Cannes last week is set to be seen by film fans all over the world after it was bought up by a raft of international distributors at the French festival. Red Road, made by the Glasgow production company, Sigma Films, won the…
09 August 2011

How to support the indie film & music companies who lost 1000s of DVDs/CDs in Enfield fire

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 surviv…
16 July 2006

India bans Blogger, Typepad and Geocities

India's Department of Telecomunications has begun to block dozens of websites, including any site from Blogger, TypePad and Geocities. Working from a '22-page list', ISPs in India have been instructed to prevent access to all listed websites. More information available from Within…
  • 15 April 2006
    BBC

Newsround Goes Large With Docs For Kids

  Children's TV programme Newsround, still the only dedicated daily news service for children in the UK, is to go large with a spin off documentary series called Newsround Investigates. The programmes take an in-depth look at issues affecting children’s lives, starting in May.   Newsround Investigates is in documentary format for children, screening on BBC One. For the first time in its 34-year history, the award-winning programme has bee…
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25 February 2008

Africa in Motion 2008 - Call for Entries from emerging African filmmakers

Africa in Motion, Edinburgh's African film festival, launches a new Short Film Competition for emerging African filmmakers. The Africa in Motion film festival (AiM), which takes place annually in October at Edinburgh Filmhouse, is officially inviting African filmmakers to submit short fi…
13 August 2007

INVESTMENT NEEDED IN SCOTTISH FILM

  Glasgow-based producer Gillian Berrie is urging Scotland's Holyrood Parliament to invest in studios and other facilities to help the country match the output of foreign rivals. Berrie, of Sigma Films the company behind Hallam Foe which opens the Edinburgh International Film Festival this…
27 June 2011

Last few days to submit to Encounters Bristol for Oscar shortlisting

submitted by Encounters ENCOUNTERS BRISTOL INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (16 – 20 NOVEMBER) DEADLINE 30 JUNE There are only a few days left to submit your short film or animation to the 17th Encounters Bristol International Film Festival (16-20 November). Submit by 30th June for a chance to win…
  • 21 May 2008
    Production

The sun shines in Cannes on a New Voice in World Cinema

"Religion is something private, it's about you and your God. You respect me, I respect you - we live together this fantastic life. This is why God made us different. If he made us the same with one religion, it would make life boring. That's why he made us different: white, black, yellow, brown."  Mohamed Al Daradji * It was Laurence Boyce, actually, who alerted me to Ahlaam - the first fiction film to be shot in Iraq in decades, using a largely…
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03 May 2006

Starbucks Signs William Morris to Discover New Entertainment Deals

  Starbucks has signed Hollywood talent agency William Morris to suggest music, film and book projects for the Seattle-based coffee retailer to consider marketing and distributing in its stores, according to the Los Angeles Times.   Starbucks entered the movie marketing indust…
23 June 2006

Iraqis Shooting Films, Not Guns

  A cherub-faced, computer-generated moppet clutches a magic paintbrush and flies high above the city skyline, before coming face to face with a giant rainbow, which then suddenly morphs into an enormous flag, and back again. It's not the sort of surreal visual whimsy you would expect…
12 February 2006

“Shoot Me a Croc Picture – Make it Snappy” - Weinstein

The atmosphere is dark, dismal and claustrophobic. From the cave roof, water drips and trickles underfoot. The noxious odour of rotting bones fills the fetid air. Meanwhile, leaves swirl gently on the surface of a filthy swamp. A young woman lies unconscious at the water's edge, one leg badly gored…
  • 09 October 2006
    Cross media

Disney Co-Chair recognises 'piracy is a business model'

"Pirates compete the same way we do - through quality, price and availability." Giving the Keynote address at Mipcom, Disney co-chair Anne Sweeney has broken with studio convention and recognised piracy as a business model to compete with, as opposed to simply an illegal threat to be battled. Sweeney's pragmatic conversion came after seing - within 15 minutes of the ABC network premiere of Despearate Housewives - a high-quality, ad-free version that had appeared on P2P netw…
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03 September 2006

Loose Change: Filmmaker uses Google Video to challenge official line on 9/11

22-year-old Dylan Avery’s wish to delve into the reasons behind the 9/11 attacks led to him making Loose Change, a documentary that involves some very compelling conspiracy-theorising. It is also bolstered by some impressively persuasive evidence. Since the first edition appeared…
13 November 2008

£10k & £8k Music Video pitches invited

Caroline Bottomley, founder of Radar - the leading site for music video production opportunities, writes in with details of a £10,000 music video production budget plus £8,000 prize for Aviv Geffen. Geffen, a huge star in Israel, is launching his UK career with an invitation to…
10 February 2007

2007 BAFTA Film Award winners in full - regal night for the Brits

A night of royalty as The Queen picked up best film and best actress for Helen Mirren (what a suprise) and The Last King of Scotland scored best actor for Forrest Whitaker and the Alexander Korda Best British Film Award. Paul Greengrass picked up best director, meanwhile, for United 91, with Andr…
  • 16 December 2006
    Internet

Time Magazine crowns YOU as Person of the Year 2006

"This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person." In a somewhat gimmicky yet touching move, Time Magazine's famous (and sometimes infamous - see Hitler in 1938) Person of the Year awards has named us, the general blogging, vlogging, myspacing, youtubing, wikipding multitudes as their figure of the year. The award is given in respo…
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27 March 2006

BBC to Document The Raj

BBC Birmingham is to produce three 60-minute documentaries for BBC2 marking the 60th anniversary of the British Raj. Britain's colonial rule over its Indian Empire ended with independence for India in 1947 and partition into separate countries of India and East and West Pakistan…
25 April 2006

Out of Tune BBC Plans Radical Shakeup

  According to Mark Thompson, Director General, The BBC risks "losing a generation forever" if it fails to adopt radical and wide-ranging programming and content plans unveiled today, designed to satisfy and retain existing audiences and reach out to develop new ones. His remarks…
06 August 2007

Calls for Social Networks to open up

"Humans are migratory beasts and as soon as they figure out that they’ve been locked-in-they’ll rebel." Marc CanterAs Facebook faces a lawsuit from uni-peers of founder Mark Zuckerberg claiming he stole the idea from them, Wired publishes a debate of why Facebook - and othe…
  • 19 February 2015
    Latest

Site back, upgraded

Netribution 1 was great in that it was all HTML and a bit of CSS – 15 years on not a single page has ever been hacked and most of them are still there. Netribution 2.0 launched in 2006 on a CMS and unless CMSs get regularly upgraded they eventually get hacked or break. This just happened here, so as tempting as it has been to leave this space as an archive and change nothing, reality refused: I had to either take the site down and lose everything, or fix it. It's been rebui…
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17 April 2006

Britains Pioneer Colour Filmmaker Exposed

  Following the enormous international success of the BBC/ bfi collaboration on The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon, the BBC and the bfi are launching a new co-production, this time following in the footsteps of British pioneer colour cinematographer Claude Friese-Greene.   The O…
21 March 2006

Budget Briefing - tax details confirmed

In his 2006 Budget report, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown confirmed the Pre-Budget announcement of a new tax relief system replacing Section 42 and Section 48 from 1 April this year. The new tax relief system will mean: - on low budget films (with production budgets up to &p…
23 April 2006

Chadha To Direct Dallas Big Screen Remake

  British director Gurinder Chadha announced yesterday she will direct John Travolta and Jennifer Lopez in a big-screen version of the '80s TV show, Dallas.   The Bend it Like Beckham director said she signed a deal with 20th Century Fox to direct the film, which will sta…
  • 13 October 2008
    Festivals

The Blue Tower tops Raindance as Frost settles over London

The Blue Tower - the first feature by award-winning Indian British writer/director Smita Bhide, set in Southall, West London's colourful and bustling Indian community - picked up the best British Film at Raindance 2008 , which came to a close as the 52nd London Film Festival kicked off with the world premiere of Frost/Nixon. Mohan dreams of escape: from his unhappy marriage, his overbearing family, his unexciting prospects. He finds it by falling into an affair…
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14 January 2011

PUMA.Creative Catalyst Awards - Accepting Proposals

from BritDoc PUMA.Creative Catalyst Awards Dear Friends,  We are delighted to announce the launch of a new international documentary development fund.  The PUMA.Creative Catalyst Awards are here to support the development of your documentary film idea and give you resources to shoot and edit yo…
16 December 2006

Time Magazine crowns YOU as Person of the Year 2006

"This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person." In a somewhat gimmicky yet touching move, Time Magazine's famous (and sometimes infamous - see Hitler…
17 October 2006

Latest UK Film Council P&A Awards

The UK Film Council have unveiled their latest round of Print and Advertising funding. The Prints and Advertising Fund (P&A) provides £2 million a year for the wider release of specialised, art-house and foreign language film. The P&A support is used to produce extra prints an…
  • 22 February 2007
    Documentary

New insurance to cover doc-makers for fair use

Variety (which is now free!) reports: Inspired partly by "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," a veteran showbiz insurer has started offering coverage for documakers, aimed at allowing free use of film clips. Initiative by Media/Professional Insurance is designed to explicitly allow documentarians to retain coverage if they rely on the "fair use" doctrine, which holds that copyrighted material may be used without compensation if it's for purposes…
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06 May 2006

Edinburgh Film Reportage Welcomes World Press Congress

  Edinburgh's Filmhouse Cinema is showing a short season of films to coincide with the International Press Institute's World Congress taking place in Scotland's capital city. The cinema will screen four films showing the inside world of journalism and its ability to stand up to…
14 September 2006

Google hire lobby firm behind the Al Gore YouTube Fraud

BoingBoing is reporting today that Google have appointed controversial Washington-based lobying and 'astroturffing' firm DCI to represent them in the US. DCI, run by Republican Party officials, came into public controversy earlier in the year when the Washington Post revealed it had pr…
03 March 2007

Roundup: Black Friday, the Development Fund, FESPACO, Adobe and Apple

I'm in the final throws of pulling together a new book so haven't time to post properly, but here's a round up of some of the latest stories.. The big story in the UK is the sudden closure of the GAAP tax schemes, which Martin Churchill of Tax Efficient Review claims could cost…