submitted by the Scottish Documentary Institute Observer passes for the The Edinburgh Pitch: 14 June – 9:30-17:30 are now available!   Entering its 5th year and running alongside the Edinburgh International Film Festival (15-26 June), the Edinburgh Pitch is the only international documentary pitching forum in Scotland. Independent filmmakers and companies developing and raising finance for cr...

A sad day for British film - the New Producers Alliance, lynchpin of the UK independent film world over the past two decades, and long term friend and supporter of Netribution, has closed its doors. They ceased trading a week ago, blaming the recession and increased competition for training. Indeed it was the NPA's producer training that was responsible for me incorporating not only Netributi...

  Wanton Muse Phillipa Goslet (right), formerly profiled on Netribution, finally has her Dali film, Little Ashes, Greenlit and into production, with an autumn shoot. The film, backed by APT Films, Aria FIlms, Met Film and Factotem is helmed by Oscar-nominated Paul Morrison and focuses on the the relationship between Dali, Lorca and Bunuel. The news comes as a second Dali project, staring...

  The number of Britons working in the American film industry has surged by 20% in the past five years. More than 30,000 actors, directors, writers and moneymen are living in Los Angeles alone, according to their unions. Flooded by applications, the LA office of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts has all but closed its doors to new members.

This just in from David at the NPA - funding for NPA membership OR training. If it wasn't for attending their famed producer training I wouldn't have incorporated Netribution. If only I'd stayed to the end of the course, I might have not actually focussed on making features! Well recommended: The Women in Digital Entertainment (WiDE) project and the Business and Digital Media...

 The film critics over at The Daily Telegraph have gotten together and selected who they feel are the 21 best British directors of all-time. How they settled on the 21 is a big mystery, although they say "whittling the list down to just 21 was as enjoyable as it was difficult. We have included only those who were raised chiefly in Britain and who focused above all on making fe...

  The first actor to play James Bond on screen, Barry Nelson, has died aged 89. The BBC reports Nelson played the famous British spy in a one-hour TV adaptation of Casino Royale in 1954. He signed to movie giants MGM in the 1940s and went on to appear in several of the studio's films, including Shadow of the Thin Man and A Yank on the Burma Road. His wife Nansi said ...

  The Czech film industry, having emerged from 2006 with record audience share figures only to find it still faces perilous obstacles. Following a dismal 2005, when the number of cinema admissions for new Czech productions sank to 2.4 million from 2004's 2.9 million, last year saw a high of 3.2 million admissions, the highest since 1993's 4.3 million. The success evidenced...

They are usually found in a galaxy far, far away - or at the very least in a film studio,  but an exhibition to mark 30th anniversary of the Star Wars films will bring movie memorabilia worth "well over £1 million" to Britain. One hundred crates of props, space ships and costumes, along with 17 tons of tempered-glass display cases, will roll into London on 10 lorries bo...