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News stories from Jan 2006 to 2012..

  • 09 October 2007
    Festivals

Learning disabilities festival Brigtens up Hove

A record 113 entries have been whittled down to 38 for the Oska Bright film festival - the only festival in Europe that showcases films made by and for people with learning disabilities - which opens in Hove, East Sussex, on Monday. From the Guardian: The films, the longest of which runs for seven minutes, include Celebrity Shotgun, an EastEnders-style soap about infidelity, and In Our Shoes, a documentary about the emotional impact on a woman with learni...
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23 June 2006

Become a Movie Producer - for $1

  Here's the pitch: a Bay Area motel room at night. A young couple, Tao and Bella. A phone call. An urgent message. They have to get to Los Angeles to get Tao's little brother, Leo, out of custody and into a drug rehab unit before 8 o'clock the next evening - or Leo gets sent...
21 September 2010

Sir Ridley Scott selects winner in Philips Cinema Parallel Lines contest

Today, Sir Ridley Scott announces Porcelain Unicorn from American director Keegan Wilcox as the winning short film in Philips’ Tell It Your Way film-making contest. The contest, which received over 600 entries from around the world, invited aspiring filmmakers to create an original short fi...
28 September 2010

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...
  • 23 April 2006
    Sales

Bollywood Star Kumar Makes Good UK Opening Weekend

  Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar is fast emerging as the contender to Shahrukh Khan and Salman Khan for the Bollywood overseas heartthrob tag. UK opening weekend for his latest film made it no 10 in UK box office, on a par with many Hollywood movies.   After the strong showing in the overseas circuit of Garam Masala, Diwane Huye Paagal and Dosti, all of which starred Akshay Kumar, the Bollywood actor's “intense lover" act in his latest fi...
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30 March 2006

Brando's First Screen Test Discovered

  Marlon Brando's first scene test, made in 1947 for Rebel Without a Cause, a film made eight years later with James Dean in the starring role, has been discovered and will be included as an extra in a DVD set featuring a restored Streetcar Named Desire scheduled to be released on Ma...
12 August 2006

Rocket Post Arrives Five Years Late

  Award-Winning Film Gets an Outing at Last It was supposed to be a cinema blockbuster - the true story of a German scientist trying to deliver Scottish mail by rocket. But five years after shooting ended, and two years after the director died, The Rocket Post has only now landed a...
11 July 2007

Not such a Cruel World for Vito Rocco with $2m feature funding

Vito Rocco's Goodbye Cruel World, produced by the UK arm of Partizan (music video whizzes and creators of The Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), has won 60% of the vote in the MyMoviesMashup contest. Rocco will go on to direct his feature Faintheart with a £1...
  • 05 April 2006
    Finance

Film Finance - One Brick at a Time

  American filmmaker Kurt Burk has set up a production company with a completely novel way of raising capital to fund his film projects – one that may get around the problem of financing new work in a conservative film funding climate. One Brick Productions is selling off equity shares in Burk's films one brick at a time.   Burk's first offerings come from the pen of the legendary creator of Disney's 1960's cartoon class...
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22 March 2006

BBC Axes Birt's "Producer Choice" Internal Market

Thirteen years after Director-General John Birt brought the internal market system into the BBC, calling it Producer Choice, it looks as though Mark Thompson the present DG has called time on it, according to reports in Ariel, the BBC in-house journal. The words "Producer Choice"...
03 June 2008

Five Minutes of Mystery short film competition

Calling all mysterious moving-image makers, enigmatic engineers of the silver screen! Five Minutes of Mystery challenges you to create and submit short films around a theme of mystery. Part of ‘The Compass of Mystery Festival’, Five Minutes of Mystery will bring together film-make...
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 ...
  • 21 August 2006
    Box office

Snakes on a Plane scrapes top spot, still shakes marketing rulebook

The Samuel L Jackson film, Snakes on a Plane, described by one blogger as 'the most Internet-hyped movie of all time' has disapointed in it opening weekend, struggling to hold the top spot in the US ahead of last weeks' Talladega Nights. The film, which went back into production to shoot extra scenes following huge web interest, was hoped by some to show the web's potential for making or breaking a film. Some argued that distributor New Line Cinema&#...
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20 August 2007

Scottish Mental Health Film Festival to launch in October

Call for entries for the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, October 2007 Glasgow is set to host the first Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film festival, in celebration of World Mental Health Day. With one in four people experiencing a mental health trouble at some point in their ...
13 August 2008

Microwave: Round Three open

Are you a short film-maker looking to take the leap into features? Do you have the burning desire to tell a story and need funding and support to realise your project? Round three of Microwave, Film London’s micro-budget feature film fund, is now open for applications. The scheme i...
28 May 2006

European Co-Productions Held in Un Certain Regard

  European co-production and increasing European involvement in international production appears to have been favoured in the Un Certain Regard awards ceremony at Cannes this year.   The Grand Prize, presented by jury president Monte Hellman, went to Luxury Car by China'...
  • 25 July 2006
    Festivals

New UK Festival Celebrates Documentary Film-Making

  BritDoc 2006 26th-28th July Keble College, Oxford A portrait of the Iraq war made by soldiers on the frontline, life in a former concentration camp, the ludicrous attempts to assassinate the president of Cuba and an unflinching chronicle of a year of suicides from San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge - these are among the 20 feature-length documentary films competing in the inaugural Britdoc festival, which starts today at Keble College, Oxford. &nb...
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22 November 2006

Details of new Cultural Test for British Films and transitional arrangements confirmed

Revised guidelines appear to no longer require film to be shot in the UK or have UK cast and crew to qualify as 'British' Details of the new cultural test for qualifying British Films for new tax relief were announced Thursday as well as transitional arrangements for films set to . At...
17 October 2008

Skins – new ways to get involved..

From Emma Carter: "The good folk at e4 are giving you lucky people more chances than ever to get involved in Skins. Series 3 will be with us soon, and this time round they need your creative juices flowing early! They’re after your acting skills, your music, your directing...
04 July 2006

Second BB Australia Housemate Claims Sexual Abuse

  The Big Brother sexual assault scandal deepened last night as a past housemate on the Australian show claimed she had also been victim to similar abuse while in the house. Meanwhile, Cox and Bric, who were accused in the original sexual assault allegation and had to leave the house,...
  • 27 April 2006
    Screen Agency

Scottish Screen Signals New Directions

  Scottish Screen, the first "one door" screen agency in the UK, is signalling a change in direction, away from funding features for cinema and towards marketing and promotion of locations and skills and digital content.   The agency's budget from the Scottish Executive is over £3m a year and it invests a further £3m of lottery funds. In the past five years it has invested £11m of public money into more than 50 Scottish...
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21 March 2007

More Tax Woes For UK Producers

  New Ruling Caps Amount Raised Under EIS U.K. film producers were hit with a second tax clampdown in as many weeks on budget day as the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown delivered his annual budget speech. While Brown told a packed House of Commons that he wants to put the ...
23 August 2006

Sheffield Docfest Annouces Sneak Preview of 2006 Programme

With just four months to the Sheffield DocFest 2006, the festival is delighted to announce a sneak preview of this year’s programme. Now in its 13th year, the festival is the UK ’s must attend event for anyone working in documentary and factual film and television. This year&...
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 remar...
  • 08 June 2009
    Young people

Young Film Academy, Bringing the UK Film Industry to Britain’s schools.

From Michael Gandy @ Young Film Academy Young Film Academy (YFA) is not your usual filmmaking teaching provider. YFA founders James Walker and Ed Boase are teaching young filmmakers and making waves in the professional film world too, with their award-winning film production company, Magma Pictures - sister company to Young Film Academy. The Young Film Academy (YFA) is the UK’s leading educational filmmaking provider for schools in both the secondary and state sectors...
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20 June 2006

Producer/Directors Most Wanted Freelancers

  Statistics taken from the Broadcast Freelancer Database show Producer/Director is the most popular search made by the 900 registered employers who are using the site.  The site holds a database of over seven thousand freelancers, searchable by production companies looking fo...
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 ...
02 August 2006

Canon Launches World's Smallest HDV Camcorder

  Pocket-Sized & Packed With High Tech Features  Until now, the concept of putting true 1080 HD (high definition) video recording capability in your pocket was purely science fiction. Get ready for the future. Canon's newest HV10 HDV camcorder delivers high definiti...
  • 04 November 2009
    Finance

iFeatures microbudget scheme now open for submissions

From South West Screen's Chris Moll; South West Screen and BBC Films have launched iFeatures, a new digital film initiative, open to writers, directors and producers from across the UK. Headed up by Chris Moll who was behind last year's Digital Departures scheme ('Of Time and The City', 'Kicks' and 'Salvage'),  iFeatures aims to harness fresh stories, outstanding creative talent and innovative production methods to create 3 full-length feature films during 2010. Followi...
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20 June 2006

Don’t Let Our Film Industry Go Down The Pan

  Forty-five Scottish filmmakers, who between them have made 134 feature films have declared dissent at the plan to merge Scottish Screen - originally set up as a one-stop film agency - with Scottish Arts into a single body to be known as Creative Scotland. The filmmakers include the cre...
04 September 2007

This Is England released on DVD

Shane Meadows' This Is England, set in early 80s northern England among skinheads and National Front members, was released on DVD on Monday 3rd September.   It won the UK FIlm Talent Award at the 2006 London Film Festival, as well as the British Independent Film Award for  B...
24 February 2011

The Edinburgh Pitch is back: 14-16 June 2011

Submissions are now open for The Edinburgh Pitch 2011! The Edinburgh Pitch is the only international documentary pitching forum in Scotland, now entering its 5th year and running alongside the Edinburgh International Film Festival (15-26 June). It’s aimed at independent filmmakers and companies ...
  • 19 January 2007
    Film

Celluloid Dreams Disappear in a Digital Puff

  Throughout its history, celluloid film has seen many other recording formats rise and fall. Developed back in the late 19th century, this thin, fragile and expensive medium has outlasted long-playing records, compact discs and video cassettes, and remained the movie industry's prime method of initial distribution deep into the digital age, despite the growing importance of DVDs to the bottom line. Even today, when just about every other recording mediu...
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04 July 2006

Indie Filmmaker Releases Award-Winning Feature as a Download for Keeps

  Whilst the Big Studios grapple with Apple over pricing, independent filmmakers are racing ahead to exploit this emerging revenue stream. Now independent producer HARP28 has released a segmented feature-film, Crooked Features, for digital download in conjunction with Lulu, the world'...
04 May 2006

BBC Plans Uniform Freelance Pay Rates

  A leaked document shows the BBC is planning to introduce a system of uniform rates for freelancers right across the corporation, standardising rates of pay for craft freelancers across all departments. A new central purchasing unit will then supply these departments with freelance staf...
02 March 2006

i-Tune an Oscar Short

US movie fans are being offered the chance to download Oscar-nominated short films from iTunes. Film buffs traditionally had little chance to view short films up for Hollywood's biggest awards, but all five nominees for the live-action short film award have been put on iTunes for $1.99 (£1...
  • 18 March 2007
    Festivals

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’s inaugural event in 2000, will take over from previous director Esther Johnson in April. Laurence Boyce has been involved with film for almost 10 years. Afte...
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20 January 2006

Sony's Z1E 'Unbelievable' at Minus Thirty

“The last thing you want is to sort the camera out when you are that cold, but because the HVR-Z1E was so straightforward to use, I was enthusiastic to get it out and use it... at an average temperature of minus thirty I didn’t expect it to work, but I picked it up and used it.”...
14 October 2007

Leeds Film Festival to celebrate its 21st with a packed programme

New films from Werner Herzog, Wes Anderson and the Coen Brothers pepper the programme for the UK's biggest film festival outside London and Edinburgh. The Leeds International Film Festival, now in its 21st year, opens on 7th November with the acclaimed Cannes Jury Prize winning French...
03 May 2007

Call for Entries: DepicT! ‘07 90 Second Film Competition

DepicT! short film competition, part of the renowned Encounters International Short Film Festival (Wed 21 – Sun 25 Nov ‘07), once again challenges filmmakers from across the globe to come up with a compelling, imaginative idea and distil it into 90 seconds of cinematic or...