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News stories from Jan 2006 to 2012..

  • 08 June 2006
    TV

UK Indies Make Strong Joint Showing For Mipcom

UK independent producers will for the first time have a major presence at this year's Mipcom in Cannes - one of the world's largest TV and audiovisual markets, with a UK pavilion housing up to 35 companies under one banner. The UK pavilion has been organised by Pact, the trade body for independent TV and film producers and has been funded by a partnership of industry stakeholders from across the UK. The launch of the Pavilion represents the culmination…
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18 January 2007

BBC Boomtown Wraps Up Film Festival

  Salford Film Festival, created in 2003 to showcase local film talent, is being scrapped because, organisers claim, the event's been overlooked by Salford City Council. They say it shows that the city doesn't care about low level community projects.  Salford is due to receive…
07 August 2006

Indian Filmmakers Gain UK Environment Fellowships

  Films To Air on Discovery Channel & Wildscreen Festival Seven Indian wildlife documentary filmmakers have been awarded British Environment Film Fellowships for 2006. The fellowships, worth Rs 600,000 each,  have been awarded to Sonya V Kapoor, Himanshu Malhotra, Jay Mazoomd…
11 December 2008

Touch of Gold at Globes 09 as nominations announced

A day after the Film Council declared 2007 the best year for British film exports since 1995, there's a bumper crop of nominations in the 2009 Golden Globes. From the BBC : Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Emma Thompson and Dame Judi Dench are among the British actors to feature on this year's…
  • 06 July 2006
    Internet

TribalWeb Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Service Launched in the UK

TribalWeb, a free peer-to-peer file sharing service, has launched its services in the UK. TribalWeb, is designed for individuals, groups and small businesses and allows users to share documents of any size, photographs or films, on a private network.     First launched in France in 2005, the service attracted more than 120,000 users in its first year. " we have been able to achieve our goals of simplicity, speed and security " "…
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26 March 2006

BT & Hollywood Talk Film Streaming

UK telephone giant BT is in advanced talks with several Hollywood studios to give its internet customers access to a comprehensive film library this autumn. It has already signed a deal with Paramount.      CUSTOMER CHOICE  Dan Marks, the chief executive of B…
19 May 2006

The march for net neutrality continues

A battle has been raging in the US which goes to the very core of the Internet and the freedoms which enshrine it. On the one hand is the idea that the Internet flourishes as a place free from regulation. On the other is the principle of 'network neutrality', whereby ISPs should tran…
18 July 2006

It’s Your New BBC

    Massive Top Job Shake-up Splits the Beeb Into Three A big shake-up of BBC production and commissioning is to elevate director of television Jana Bennett to take control of all audio-visual content. Four new "super commissioners"will also be created, who will re…
  • 29 June 2006
    Production

Lights, Camera, Action . . . Frostbite!

  Russia is Creating its Own Version of Hollywood It is -25C in a disused Red Army hangar in northern Russia. The director is wearing 18 layers of clothing. The cast can act for only a few minutes, before being taken inside to protect them from frostbite. Welcome to Stoliwood, Russia's answer to Hollywood. The director, the Emmy-award winning Brit Tom Roberts, recalls from the relative comfort of North London the tough experience of shooting the film In Tr…
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05 June 2009

French Temptation Island camera fodder win employment tribunal

Gotta love the French, especially as C4 continue their 9-year long bukaki over the nation's psyche and moral compass: "Temptation Island constitutes a job and therefore justifies an employment contract," the court said. "Tempting a person of the opposite sex requires concentration and attention."…
08 July 2009

The Co-Op backed Burma VJ shows the reality behind the monk rebellion & crackdown

The first feature film to ever be screened at Number 10, in an event set-up by Sarah Brown on Aung San Suu's birthday, and the first feature from the Co-Op Group's new partnership with distributor DogWoof - Burma VJ is a guerilla documnetary made up of footage smuggled out of Myanmar (Burma) by vid…
21 March 2006

Sheffield DocsFest Announces Oz Director

Sheffield International Documentary Festival has appointed Heather Croall as its new Director. Croall is formerly Director of the Australian International Documentary Conference and will start her new post early in April. Croall's career in the Australian screen industry has included worki…
  • 09 February 2006
    TV

Netribution's HDTV UK Guide

Several years after it launched in the US and Japan High Definition Television, or HDTV, is finally set to arrive in Europe. The stores are full of HD ready flat screen sets (plasma and LCD) and projection systems, the transmission standards have been agreed. All that is lacking now is HDTV content and that is building fast. This is the Netribution Guide to where you will find HDTV and when. It will deliver striking images in either the 720p or 1080i formats which broadcaste…
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01 December 2008

Record Numbers Join Secret Cinema to go Ghostbusting in Westminster

News in about the most recent not-so-secret-anymore Secret Cinema, Future Cinema/Nokia's immersive cinema experience night. FUTURE CINEMA in association with NOKIA hosted a sell-out SECRET CINEMA at the Royal Horticultural Halls on Friday. Guests arrived in Westminster to find the venue and surrou…
09 August 2006

Idi Amin Movie Opens LFF

  Kevin Macdonald's Last King of Scotland   The feature debut of Oscar-winning documentary director Kevin Macdonald, The Last King of Scotland, starring Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin, will open the London Film Festival on October 18th. The film, billed as a European p…
14 February 2007

fmx/07 is taking form...

For the fmx team, January and February are the hottest months of the year: we now have the first confirmations from speakers and companies with exciting ideas to present at fmx/07 – the 12th International Conference on Animation, Effects, Realtime and Content. The international digital commun…
  • 28 September 2010
    Box office

The Future of Exhibition: Opening the Box Office - our panel at OVC

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 present…
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24 April 2006

BBC £1m Shareout To Regional Indies

  The BBC has chosen 23 independent production companies between which it will share its £1m regional development fund. The fund was launched at Broadcast's Commissioning Conference in Manchester last November. It was intended to support programme development from indies that are…
02 March 2006

Canada Backs Two Feature Documentaries

The National Film Board of Canada has announced the winners of its Feature Documentary Fund, which is investing $800,000 in two new theatrical documentaries. The winning projects are Basement Tapes, directed by Brett Gaylor and co-produced by Mila Aung-Thwin and John Christou (Eyesteelfilm) and Ger…
18 July 2006

It’s Your New BBC

    Massive Top Job Shake-up Splits the Beeb Into Three A big shake-up of BBC production and commissioning is to elevate director of television Jana Bennett to take control of all audio-visual content. Four new "super commissioners"will also be created, who will re…
  • 26 July 2006
    Documentary

Stephen Lawrence Documentary Sparks Police Corruption Probe

  Metropolitan Police Service Will Carry Out a Full Investigation The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has voiced concerns over the controversial BBC documentary ‘The Boys Who Killed Stephen Lawrence' which was screened on BBC 1 last night and confirmed that The Metropolitan Police will face a corruption probe.   IPCC Deputy Chair John Wadham said: "There are two serious allegations in this film and we will be asking t…
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27 June 2006

Cream of Cornwall Pitch to Awayday Execs

  Creatives are flocking to Cornwall; sun, sea and scriptwriters on annual migration have joined many permanent media professionals who having learned their craft elsewhere have returned across the Tamar and set up shop on their own. Today they will be pitching their scripts and projects t…
01 April 2007

EMI begins the DRM detox with Apple

Responding to overwhelming public demand, Apple and EMI announced at an event in London plans to release a number of EMI catalogue titles without the DRM software which dictates what can and cannot been done with  downloaded music. The move has implications for the film industry as producers…
02 March 2006

Howls of Horror at Wolf Creek

It has to be one of the most painful scenes in cinematic history. The killer severs the spine of the heroine, almost cheerfully taunting his victim that she is now 'a head on a stick', as she lies dying in her own blood.... This is one of the more gruesome scenes in low-budget Aussie horror-flick W…
  • 24 April 2006
    Film industry

Cameron Says Digital 3D Will Save Hollywood

  Titanic director James Cameron, has issued a warning that Hollywood is "in a fight for survival." He wants the movie industry to offer films in digital 3-D to counteract declining sales and rampant piracy.   "Maybe we just need to fight back harder, come out blazing, not wither away and die," Cameron said during his keynote address Sunday at the National Association of Broadcasters' Digital Cinema Summit. "D-cinema ca…
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02 February 2009

Edinburgh Film Festival 2009 - Call for Entries

The 2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival is open for submissions. You can submit online through the EIFF website or download a form and mail it to them or submit through withoutabox. The 63rd EIFF will take place from 17 – 28 June in Edinburgh.  The Festival is international…
01 August 2006

Debt Trail Follows Film Firm Downunder

  Hard Drive Sinks For Troubled River Queen Firm The film company behind the troubled movie River Queen has left a trail of debts in Queenstown after the collapse of its latest venture after only six weeks. Silverscreen Films (HD) halted pre-production work on Hard Drive, a car-chase…
03 April 2008

Three new contests for vloggers and online filmmakers

From the brilliant Global Voices website , comes news of three contests for vloggers around the world. Two are on Spannish sites but are open to anyone anywhere. One is for mobile movies, one to promote causes you care for and the last to report news through online video. More details and sampl…
  • 09 March 2006
    Finance

Britfilm Indies To Get WARP Drive

British filmmakers are to get a shot in the arm as Warp X, a new digital film studio designed to shake up the way feature films are financed and produced in Britain, launches on 23rd March. Warp X is backed by £4.5 million of funding from the National Lottery, Film Four and regional screen agencies and by using the latest digital production methods, Warp plan to make seven low budget feature films over the next three years. Warp X was awarded £3 million as one o…
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11 November 2008

Short Film Completion Fund (2009/I) Call for Entries Extended!

From Tamsin @ MayaVision: Individual producers or production companies are invited to send a rough cut of their unfinished short film (up to 15 minutes in length) to Maya Vision International, along with a completed application form. The closing date for applications has been extended…
06 January 2007

Ken Russell Walks From Big Brother House

  The 79-year-old film director Ken Russell quit the Cebrity Big Brother TV reality TV show after a row with fellow housemate Jade Goody at lunchtime today, show bosses announced. The housemates were told of Russell's departure when a laminate revealing Ken's exit was given to jour…
06 May 2008

Roccos Faintheart to close a Best of British Edinburgh

Those concerned that the movement of the Edinburgh Film Festival from its August spot would mean a shortage of quality titles may need to hold their breath as the festival unveiled it's 2008 lineup today. There are 15 World Premieres at the festival, including Vito Rocco's My Movies Mashup winner…
  • 06 January 2007
    TV

Ken Russell Walks From Big Brother House

  The 79-year-old film director Ken Russell quit the Cebrity Big Brother TV reality TV show after a row with fellow housemate Jade Goody at lunchtime today, show bosses announced. The housemates were told of Russell's departure when a laminate revealing Ken's exit was given to journalist Carole Malone. Russell's fellow celebrities appeared stunned when the news was given to them.   Russell is now the second celebrity to leave the house…
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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…
19 May 2011

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 m…
03 February 2008

Carbon Neutral Filmmaking

Al Gore’s climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth opened up people’s eyes to the devastating potential effects of climate change around the world. There has finally been an increase in the film world of the sometimes controversial carbon offsetting, whereby carbon used in…
  • 27 November 2006
    Copyrights

Arts Council publishes report into Creative Commons and emerging attitudes from artists

"In theory copyright represents the ability to make a living off my work. In practice it represents the threat of myself or my children not being able to express themselves without fear of the rich and powerful invoking their copyrights to silence us."  Contributor OpenBusiness.cc and the Arts Council of England have published a report looking at the attitudes towards copyright amongst British creatives. Recognising that 170,000 websites in the UK n…
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28 July 2007

Low Budget Horror Feature ‘Nailed’ in Nine Days

  The low budget horror feature film ‘Nailed', from debut director Adrian O'Connell has wrapped in Northern Ireland. The script, financing and production for the film was assembled and completed in just under four weeks. NAILED is a psycho-thriller about two criminals…
01 May 2008

Edinburgh goes Under The Radar

After being inspired by John Waters’ visit to the Edinburgh International Film Festival during 2007, EIFF Artistic Director Hannah McGill has announced a new strand of cult films for 2008’s edition.  Under The Radar will play host to films that ‘deploy low budgets…
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…