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News stories from Jan 2006 to 2012..

  • 30 April 2006
    Film industry

The Top Ten Films of Controversy

  Among the nation's top ten shockers are scenes of torture and necrophilia and a film accused of blasphemy, that featured a very naughty boy rather than a messiah. The films all feature in Time Out's film guide 1,000 Films That Changed Your Life, due to be published this week.   The list is headed by Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom, which draws on the Marquis de Sade novel, depicting the dark days of Italian fascism's demise, when fou…
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11 May 2008

UK-India co-production treaty finally gets greenlight

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 ha…
11 June 2006

Comedy Genius John Cleese 'Retires From Performing'

  Comedy legend John Cleese has said he is retiring from writing and performing sitcoms because he will never manage to top the success of Fawlty Towers. The Monty Python star will concentrate instead on publishing a book on the history of comedy and will hold classes explaining h…
22 January 2006

Pylons Galore! Obstruct Classic Film Remake

The Hebridean island of Barra looks set to miss out on the remake of the Ealing film classic Whisky Galore! shot there 60 years ago. That involved a cast and crew of 80, but Barra now looks almost certain to be by-passed by the action on the £10m remake. Filmmakers paid a visit to the Hebride…
  • 23 July 2006
    Finance

Cinema Extreme Open for Submissions

Cinema Extreme, the UK Film Council New Cinema Fund / Film Four backed high budget short film award  is open for entries. Managed by the Bureau and Lifesize pictures, a number of awards of up to £50,000 will be made. Past awardees include Andrea Arnold's Wasp, which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Short and Duane Hopkins' Love me or Leave me Alone and the Blaine Brothers' Hallo Panda (pictured). Applications will be accepted unt…
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18 March 2007

Hull Film evolving with new director, Laurence Boyce

Hull Film, organisers of the excellent Hull International Short Film Festival, is poised to evolve over the coming months with the appointment of a new Director. Laurence Boyce, longtime Netribution friend and author of the excellent Special Edition, who has been involved with Hull Film since it&…
15 September 2007

Hull Short Film Fest runs half-sized fest in October

With the recent decision to move the legendary annual Hull short film shindig to April, a special mini festival entitled the 5 ½ Hull International Short Film Festival will take place between 5th and 7th October 2007 for everyone who is worried about missing their fix of excellent short…
07 August 2006

Raw Cuts – Teenage Ideas on Vulnerability to Air on Channel 4

  Four Unknowns Get Broadcast Writing Credit   Four films written by teenagers are now in post- production, preparing for peak-time broadcast on Channel 4 this autumn. Over 1,500 film ideas were submitted for Raw Cuts, a joint writing initiative set up between the National S…
  • 23 March 2006
    BBC

BBC Goes HDTV For World Cup & Wimbledon

The BBC is set to screen this summer's football World Cup and Wimbledon championships in High-definition television. Trial run of the service will include the BBC's share of World Cup matches and key Wimbledon matches in June. The BBC is trialing HDTV for a year, starting in mid-May. The HDTV system - said to benefit sport particularly -  delivers more detailed pictures and sharper action shots, and will be an additional stream to the current analogue and…
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23 April 2006

Rights Royale Battle Over Bond TV Screening

  Following news that ITV had secured the UK television broadcast rights to the forthcoming James Bond film Casino Royale, details of the battle for Bond have started to emerge..   According to Digital Spy, rival terrestrial UK TV station Channel 4 came close to winning Danie…
16 October 2008

Oska Bright Film Festival Call for Submissions

Oska Bright Film Festival 2009 is now open for submission of short films made by learning disabled artists. Submitted by Lisa Wolfe. Oska Bright is the key national festival of films made by, and for, the learning disabled community. Now in its fourth year, the festival screens up to 40 sh…
16 May 2006

African Movie Channel Launches in UK

  UK TV viewers can now watch African movies on a 24-hour basis. Lola Onigbogi, director of the newly launched African Movie Channel, says there is an "endless" market for African productions in Britain, in particular among African immigrants. Most of the films available on-deman…
  • 19 May 2011
    Internet

Studio Beyond Launch May 25th: A Groundbreaking Concept For The Movie making World

Submitted by Studio Beyond CEO Like many successful businesses, Studio Beyond was created to solve a problem. In Hollywood, there are often significant barriers for film makers who often find themselves unable to tap into Hollywood resources. Since Hollywood is a giant business oriented towards making ‘safe’ decisions, it favors cautious choices, tending to use ‘proven’ people to work with (actors, directors, producers, editors, etc.). While this low-risk approach is under…
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29 July 2006

Fire Wrecks James Bond Film Stage

  Britain's Biggest Sound Stage Completely Destroyed The large James Bond stage at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire has been destroyed by fire. At least eight fire engines tackled the blaze at the set, where filming for the new movie Casino Royale has finished. Eyewitness Jen M…
28 October 2008

British Independent Film Award nominations announced

Steve McQueen's Bobby Sands biopic Hunger battles it out with Martin McDonagh's In Bruges, James Marsh's Man on A Wire, Danny Boyle's LFF closer Slumdog Millionaire and Shane Meadow's Somers Town in the nominations for the Best British Feature film at the 2008 BIFA Awards. The films receivin…
21 March 2007

Penultimate helps bring another feature to Shetland

After Devils Gate, The Blackening finally set to shoot in April, with possibly two more to come from Fresh Paint Pictures  Leslie Lowes, tireless champion of both British indie film and the Shetland Islands should be celebrating a double win with the announcement of a new HiDef…
  • 22 July 2007
    Finance

Teaching the Business of Film

  The Film Business Academy is the world's first international centre dedicated to the business of film.  Part of Cass Business School, the academy is based just fifteen minutes from Soho, the heart of the British film industry. The Film Business Academy aims to bring the creative energy of the international film industry together with global business expertise, with idea of creating partnerships that will help power the film business into the future…
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15 June 2006

Web based editing opens up new avenues for collaboration

For those who thought the move from linear tape or film editing to computer based non-linear editing was a big step, a host of US companies are touting what they claim is the next big thing - web based editing. Allowing, for example, a group of people who filmed a public event to upload thei…
09 March 2009

Africa in Motion short film festival - call for entries from African filmmakers

For the second year, Edinburgh's Africa in Motion (AiM) film festival is inviting African filmmakers to submit short films of up to 30 minutes for the festival's short film competition. In order to target the competition specifically towards young and emerging African film talent, filmmakers who en…
26 May 2009

Arts Beyond the Classroom brings parents and children together to explore art and blog about it

It's easy to talk about the digital revolution and the benefits of giving everyone a free and open platform for self-expression if the only people who use the best of the webs tools are contained to one social or economic group. I've previously trained people how to publish online and use CMSs, but…
  • 12 March 2006
    Cross media

Just Up Kids' Film Street

New film website is going for star quality - in tomorrow's filmmakers today. Film Street is a new website aimed at six- to nine-year-olds, designed to unlock imaginations, introduce the joys of film and encourage expression through filmmaking. For use at school and at home, the site - due to launch in April 2006 - is planning interactive activities, movie-making ideas and advice. Youngsters will be able to log on, choose a character and stroll around the virtu…
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19 February 2006

Church Produces Bollywood Aids Movie

Bollywood and the Roman Catholic Church in India have jointly produced a commercial film highlighting the problem of Aids. The controversial film-maker Mahesh Bhatt, whose films are known for steamy, bold scenes, has helped with the production. The low budget film, Why Does This Happen? cost nearl…
13 December 2006

Disney's Caspian becomes first 'British' film to not shoot in UK

Variety is reporting that, as previously anticipated here, Disney/Walden Media's new Narnia film Prince Caspian will be able to access the new British tax incentives without shooting in the UK. This is down to changes in the Cultural Criteria which recognises films based on British books with…
11 June 2009

Film Lab North to close

Sad news as I’ve recently heard that Film Lab North, based in Leeds, is going to be shut down in the next few weeks. Given that it was one of the last bastions of Super16mm and 35mm in the area, giving filmmakers in the area the opportunity to shoot on film whilst getting invaluable advice from the…
  • 20 May 2006
    Bollywood

Rickshaw Driver Rises To Movie Director

  It's a real rags-to-riches story of the Hollywood variety, but this is a tale of a poor but talented auto-rickshaw driver who has now become a Bollywood film producer, director and actor. 39-year-old Waqqr Khan, from Uttar Pradesh, is apparently semi-literate, but has produced his film Ishq Na Karna, after working as an auto-rickshaw driver in Mumbai for 16 long years.   Critics are saying that the film should do reasonably well. Khan is curr…
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12 August 2006

BritFilms On The Big Screen – Latest Offerings

  Wilderness (93 mins, 15) Directed by Michael J Bassett; starring Sean Pertwee, Alex Reid, Toby Kebbell   Alpha Male (100 mins, 15) Directed by Dan Wilde; starring Jennifer Ehle, Danny Huston, Patrick Baladi, Trudie Styler   Sisters in Law (104 mins…
21 May 2006

Film Crews to Get Star Treatment in Scotland

  Not everyone's idea of perfect guests perhaps, with their habit of staying out late, getting up early and drinking the house dry in between, but film crews spend money and bring a touch of glamour to the shooting locations they invade.   VisitScotland, the national t…
24 October 2007

Putnam Ponders Problems with Virtual Worlds for kids

"Might we not prefer to build worlds that encourage those same values and skills we wish them to exercise in the real world?" Virtual worlds threaten 'values' Opening the Virtual World Forum in London, Lord Putnam, one of the architects of current British film policy…
  • 19 August 2011
    Awards

Sailcloth Awarded Grand Jury Prize for Short Film at Rhode Island Int. Film Festival

from Berserk Films UK short film, SAILCLOTH by Elfar Adalsteins and starring John Hurt has been awarded the highest accolade at the 15th Annual Rhode Island International Film Festival - the Grand Jury Prize for Best Short. As a result of winning at Rhode Island the film automatically qualifies for consideration for an Oscar® by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences™. 'Sailcloth by Elfar Adalsteins is a brilliant and poignant work that touches at the core of the…
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13 July 2006

Jowell Makes UK Film Pitch To Hollywood

  Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell is in LA lobbying Hollywood executives to encourage  major studios to shoot more films in the UK.  Jowell is meeting executives from Warner Brothers, Disney and Universal. The UK government this year unveiled a new tax relief system aimed at…
20 August 2007

Black Filmmaker Int Film Fest kicks of with Perry's Daddy's Little Girls

The Black Film Maker International Film Festival (BIFF) will be launched on 6th September at City Hall. A week of screenings from 7th – 14th September in London, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) – Pall Mall and Odeon West End – Leicester Square will show over 50 u…
13 July 2010

Astounding British documentary ISOLATION begins limited theatrical tour from July 14th

On 14th July the remarkable British documentary Isolation will begin a limited theatrical run at Picturehouse Cinemas across the UK. The film, which received a rapturous reception when it screened at last year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2009, deals with the scandalous statistic tha…
  • 08 May 2007
    Finance

ePetition to save UK public funding from 35% Olympic cuts

Paul Gilbert recently posted to Shooting People about a new petition on the website of YouTube vlogger 'No 10 Downing Street'... "Does everyone know about this? There is a petition on the Number 10 Downing Street website already up and running which aims to: ‘Stop the Chancellor using Lottery money to plug the funding gap in the 2012 Olympics. If this goes ahead at least £900m will go from Big lottery, Sport England, Arts Council and Heritag…
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07 February 2006

Euro-MEDIA Has Strong Oscar Showing

European films with MEDIA support are strongly represented at this year’s 78th Oscars. All in all, there are five MEDIA supported films nominated for one of the prestigious golden statues which will be awarded on Sunday, 5 March 2006, in Hollywood. Three out of the five films nominated for t…
07 May 2006

Doctor Who & Dickens' Bleak House Sweep Baftas

  BBC drama productions Doctor Who and Dickens' Bleak House triumphed at the British Academy Television Awards. They each won two awards at the Baftas ceremony, including best drama series for Doctor Who, and best drama serial. The often controversial writer/director Ken Loach received…
13 February 2006

Scotland's National enters Home Run

Scotland's answer to the Royal National Theatre launches later this month. Inevitably being largely ignored by the London-based media, this is the formation of a major cultural institution, the endpoint of over a century of campaigning for the land that brings us not only Harry Potter, Sir Sea…
  • 07 July 2006
    Sales

Wippit Moves Into Movie Downloads

  The UK's movie download scene is to brighten with the Wippit online music store signing a deal with Universal to offer download-to-own features. The link-up will bring a welcome range of new releases, including King Kong and Jarhead, as well as some back-catalogue films available for UK downloaders when it launches later this month.   New releases will cost up to £20, although you do get the DVD of the film as well. Older films will cost &p…
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21 April 2009

Hull lights up from tonight with shorts

The biggest British short film festival north of London, and Netribution partner, Glimmer (the 7th International Hull Film Festival), opens tonight with a packed program. I will be at the festival over the weekend for an interesting event on Saturday: Pay to Play? 25th April, 3.30pm-5pm This year…
13 January 2007

The Forest, My Film and Save Our Tigers

  Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ashvin Kumar as in the final throes of finishing his latest film, The Forest. And by all accounts it should be a top-notch thriller, but it offers much, much more than rising hairs on the back of the neck as his Ashvin Kumar's personal blog shows... Th…
24 June 2008

Radar's first music video commission hits the front pages!

from Radar HQ: Radar's first music video commission hits the front pages! RadarMusicVideos.com is a new social network that gives filmmakers worldwide the chance to pitch for music videos. Now 3 months old, their first completed commission has just gone online where it's secured front pages…