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All Features articles – Page 493
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Features
Hong Kong Overview - Financing - A lifeline for independent producers
Launched last April, the Film Development Council (FDC) advises the Hong Kong government on policy for the promotion and development of the local film industry. It also oversees the $38m (hk$300m) Film Development Fund and related areas, such as training and promotion of film literacy.Designed to support small to medium-sized ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Flying the flag for education
The marriage of education and industry is often a forced one, but not at the UK's Met Film. The group, based at the legendary Ealing Studios, combines a film school with an ambitious production company and high-quality digital production and studio facilities. And it has been quietly putting together a ...
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France - Critical faculties
"He would never talk about his problems but it was impossible not to feel his anxiety," says young French director Mia Hansen-Love of producer Humbert Balsan, who she worked with on her debut feature, Tout Est Pardonne, winner of the prestigious Prix Louis Delluc in France last year.Later this year, ...
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Features
International - Turkey struts in
Turkish film Recep Ivedik was the surprise big hitter in the international arena this weekend, generating $5.1m from just 230 screens in its home territory and catapulting it into the top 10.It boasted easily the highest screen average, at $23,170 per screen, and marks the biggest opening for a Turkish ...
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United states - Taste of Freestyle
With deep roots in the not-so-glamorous world of independent theatrical distribution - and headquarters in laid-back Malibu rather than swanky Beverly Hills - Freestyle Releasing has always had a relatively low profile.But over time, says president and co-founder Mark Borde, "we've put together a studio-style distribution company," whose team of ...
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Features
United states - Financial Fusion
The name Cold Fusion Media Group suggests that in the tricky business of film finance the seemingly impossible may sometimes be possible. The company's business plan, meanwhile, focuses on the practicalities of financing and facilitating lower-budget independent production.Launched last autumn by CEO Michael Roban, the two-man Los Angeles-based operation reflects ...
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Features
Exhibition - Putting the multi into multiplex
Last month, in the Welsh town of Holyhead, the only cinema closed its doors after 80 years. People were still going to the movies but - thanks to the recent introduction of a UK smoking ban - not enough people were going to the cinema's bingo nights to keep the ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Shot In The Dark
Mark Tonderai says the biggest thing he learned when shooting his directorial feature debut Hush was to "never, ever shoot at night unless you absolutely have to".The psychological thriller, written and directed by the former BBC Radio 1 DJ, was shot entirely at night along the M1 motorway in northern ...
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Features
Distribution - Japan - Content on the move
In Japan, cable TV and satellite are still small markets. Japanese audiences watch the big five networks en masse, rented more than 25 million DVDs last year (the preferred way to watch US TV shows such as 24) and go to the cinema - in that order. The VoD market, ...
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Features
Distribution - Mobile distribution - Opening the cell door
While ringtones, text, picture messages and music are the most widely used entertainment services among China's 500 million mobile-telephone users, visual and filmed content is catching up fast. By the end of 2007, 50.4 million mobile-phone owners had access to the internet via their mobile phones.China's two telecoms carriers, China ...
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Features
Feeling Bullish
Nigel Thomas has a disarmingly straightforward explanation of Matador Pictures' guiding philosophy. "The core of the business is making quality feature films that we want to see ourselves," he claims. "If we wouldn't go see that film, we won't make it."It is a philosophy that has proved highly effective so ...
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Features
Editorial - Screen says - Rising from the ashes
It's the small ironies that often give away the big picture. And this week we have the perfect example in the northern English town of Huddersfield.The ban on smoking in public spaces, which has been spreading across much of the world, has forced local players of the game of bingo ...
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Features
Exhibition - Cinema advertising in the digital age - Point of sale
The cinema advertising business is getting ready for prime time. A television term in reference to cinema' It may not seem apt but the market is heading in that direction. The roll-out of digital projection worldwide could create a single global living room, and with it opportunities for brands to ...
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Features
Video-on-demand - Territory snapshot: Spain - Independent producers search for VoD play
With the leading VoD portals in Spain such as Imagenio and Orange TV striking deals with the US studios to show all their major projects, the smaller Spanish indie films are being squeezed out. But now local producers and distributors are fighting back with their own internet VoD portals.One of ...
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Features
International - Jumper hops to top
With Doug Liman's Jumper in at number one, India's Jodhaa Akbar was the highest non-US entry in this weekend's international top 40, generating $8.1m from 15 territories. The 16th-century love story, starring Aishwarya Rai, catapulted to number four in the chart and played on 1,105 screens for a $7,305 screen ...
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Features
The International View - Summer's thirst for firsts
I don't think we're ever going to see a summer like last year that was so reliant on sequels and remakes," suggests Fox distribution executive Chris Aronson. "And that's a good thing."It's not that the US film industry or those of France, Japan or India have slammed the door on ...
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Features
Video-on-demand - Territory snapshot: The UK - Indies fight to be seen in a new light
UK film companies are waking up to the possibilities of releasing independent films through VoD services (both online and TV).Dogwoof Digital, a film distribution company dealing with independently produced feature films, has announced it will launch the UK's first digital platform from its own website, bypassing the service provider, in ...
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Features
Sweden - Taking the crown
Jens Jonsson was on the other side of the world for his breakthrough moment. As his film The King Of Ping Pong was winning the Sundance 2008 World Cinema Jury Prize (as well as the World Cinema cinematography prize), he had already left Park City to show the film closer ...
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Features
In Focus - Cannes film festival - Palme Reading
Official selection berths seem set for Ari Folman's animated documentary Waltz With Bashir from Israel; Wong Kar Wai's revision of his 1994 martial arts classic Ashes Of Time - Redux; and Courtney Hunt's Sundance prizewinner Frozen River.Also tipped from Sundance are Barry Levinson's What Just Happened' featuring Robert De Niro, ...
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Features
Video-on-demand - Europe - Patchwork picture is a brake on growth
Europe's position in the VoD market is characterised by a distinctive set of issues that differentiate it from much of the rest of the world.One is the role of the telecoms companies, such as British Telecom, France Telecom, Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom. These were often the state monopolies that once ...