All Africa articles – Page 53
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French illegal downloads equal to box-office admissions
Illegal downloading of films in France has reached 450,000 per day according to a report by anti-piracy association ALPA.The figure represents the same level as box-office entries, the report said. Speaking to wire service Agence France Presse, Frederic Delacroix, the director of ALPA, said, 'We are facing a major phenomenon ...
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Harrison starts Unstoppable shoot in Portugal and Spain
UK writer/director Richard Harrison started shooting yesterday in Portugal for his debut feature Unstoppable.The film is now shooting in Praia da Bordeira in Portugal, and will move to Andalucia on Aug 10 and wrap on Aug 31.The Portuguese government and Andalucian Film Commission have helped with location scouting and filming ...
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Sven Sturm to head new Paramount Pictures Germany
Sven Sturm has been appointed general manager of Paramount Pictures Germany, the newly set up German operation from Paramount Pictures International.Sturm had been head of marketing at Sony Pictures Releasing (Germany) since 2000. Prior to that he worked at Universal Music in Germany. He takes the Munich-based post as of ...
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Beta Cinema handling 1936 Olympics drama
Beta Cinema will handle international distribution for Kaspar Heidelbach's drama Berlin 1936 (working title) which begins shooting in North Rhine-Westphalia on Wednesday (Aug 6), just two days before the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.The production by Cologne-based Gemini Film, one of co-producers of the Dardenne brothers' Cannes ...
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Silent Light wins at Motovun
Carlos Reygadas's Silent Light won the Motovun Propeller, the main prize of the 10th Motovun Film Festival, which wrapped Aug 1. The festival favourite and Cannes jury award winner was named Best Film by Slovenian actress Milena Zupancic, British director Pawel Pawlikowski and Pavle Levi, professor of film studies at ...
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Rome to honour Al Pacino with Gold Marco Aurelio
Al Pacino will receive career honours at the International Film Festival of Rome when the third edition unspools this October.Career honourees at the festival's first two editions include Sean Connery and Sophia Loren.The Gold Marco Aurelio honorary award will be given to Pacino, who will be on hand to take ...
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Swiss cinema continues decline in first half of 2008
Swiss cinema's market share has continued its downward trend, according to provisional figures for the first half of 2008, with local films only clinching a 2.3% slice of the box-office compared to last year's 7% and 2006's record 11.6%.Statistics collated by the industry body Procinema showed that the ambitious animation ...
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Postcard from Karlovy Vary
Karlovy Vary is known as a relaxed setting, ideal for renewing contacts. A little business was done in the pine-fringed Czech spa town during the festival (July 4-12), four films picked up local distribution, and the Eastern European line-up went down well with enthusiastic audiences, many of whom were backpacking ...
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Venice Film Festival: Italian squad takes on rest of world
The Italian flag will fly high over the Lido this year. Following a strong showing at Cannes, four local titles will screen in competition at the 65th Venice film festival, with the Italian industry out in force with 20 films.Artistic director Marco Mueller reportedly had to make an official request ...
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Grande ambitions: Locarno preview
On the eve of this year's 61st Locarno International Film Festival (August 6-16), the organisers are in bullish mood. Festival director Frederic Maire is clearly delighted to secure Julian Jarrold's Evelyn Waugh adaptation Brideshead Revisited as the festival's opening film.'It's a very strong film, which looks really classical but is ...
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Projects by Fliegauf, Alvart, Sax receive backing from German funds
New productions by Benedek Fliegauf, Christian Alvart, and Geoffrey Sax are among 35 projects receiving over $12m in support from the German Federal Film Board (FFA) and Leipzig-based Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung (MDM).At its latest sitting the Berlin-based FFA supported such projects as Hungarian director Fliegauf's first English language production, Womb, produced ...
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Russian box-office sales boom in first half of 2008
Cinemas in Russia and the CIS saw a 3.7% year-on-year increase in admissions in the first half of 2008 while sales in the first six months of the year ballooned 38.2% over the same period in 2007. According to Russian Film Business Today, more than 56m tickets were sold in ...
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Match Factory handles Venice competitors Jerichow, Teza
Cologne-based The Match Factory will handle international sales on two Venice competition titles - Christian Petzold's Jerichow and Haile Gerima's Teza - screening as world premieres at the festival.Jerichow marks The Match Factory's second collaboration with Petzold after his Berlinale 2007 competition film Yella which won lead actress and Petzold ...
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Colin Brown steps down as Editor-in-Chief of Screen International
Colin Brown is stepping down as the longstanding Editor-in-Chief of Screen International to pursue new entrepreneurial ambitions in the global media and entertainment sphere.Announcing the amicable departure, Natasha Christie-Miller, Managing Director, Retail & Media at Emap Inform, Screen's parent company, paid tribute to Brown's long and profitable association with the ...
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John Goodman, David Wenham confirmed for Pope Joan
US actor John Goodman and Australian-born David Wenham have joined the cast of Soenke Wortmann's adaptation of Donna W. Cross' bestselling novel Pope Joan, which begins principal photography in Germany's Saxony-Anhalt next week.Goodman will play the part of Pope Sergius - the role he had also been expected to play ...
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Locarno to honour Chahine with Destiny screening
The Locarno International Film Festival will pay tribute to the Egyptian director Youssef Chahine, who died last weekend at the age of 82,with a special screening of his film Destiny (Al Massir) on the Piazza Grande on August 7.This film had also been shown eleven years ago at the festival ...
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Juraj Jakubisko strikes back with empire story 200 Years Of Solitude
Juraj Jakubisko is preparing a film from the time of Great Moravian Empire, which dominated Central Europe in the 9th and 10th centuries.The Slovak director said he might release 200 Years Of Solitude (working title) in two or three parts.Jakubisko describes the project as an epic look at the time ...
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Mueller digs deep withVenice's worldly offerings
Venice is aiming widefor its 65th edition,with artistic director Marco Mueller following up 2007's heavily English-language programme with a more geographically diverse, less star-drivenline-up of films from 18 countries. Notably lighter onUS features (and with none solely from the UK), this year's Lido line-up features two Japanese animation masters and ...
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Locarno adds new films from Francois Rotger, Sean Baker
New films by Francois Rotger and Sean Baker have been added to Locarno's official selection a week before the festival opens on Aug 6 with Brideshead Revisited on the Piazza Grande.Rotger's French-Canadian co-production StoryOfJen, starring Laurence Leboeuf, Marina Hands and Tony Ward, will screen as a world premiere in the ...
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Venice competition includes Aronofsky, Arriaga, Kitano, Ozpetek
The 65th Venice Film Festival has unveiled its programme this morning.CompetitionThe Wrestler, dir. Darren Aronofsky (US)The Burning Plain, dir. Guillermo Arriaga (US)Il papa di Giovanna, dir. Pupi Avati (Italy)BirdWatchers, dir. Marco Bechis (Italy)L'Autre, dirs. Patrick Mario Bernard & Pierre Trividic (France)The Hurt Locker, dir. Kathryn Bigelow (US)Il seme della discordia, ...