All articles by Melanie Rodier – Page 14
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Venice pre-screenings cancelled
AIP (Audiovisual Industry Promotion) has cancelled theVenice pre-Screenings it was due to host on the Lido from August 30 toSeptember 1.Giovanni Galoppi, president of AIP, the new organisationformed by Cinecitta and Fiera di Milano, MIFED's parent company, had originallyannounced that around 30-40 international buyers would be invited to thescreenings of ...
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Revolver aims at international market
Revolver, the two-year-old Italian arthouse production anddistribution outfit, is ramping up its international activities. The companyhas boarded Chilean director Raoul Ruiz's upcoming film, Le Livre A Rendre as a co-producer and has also acquired Italianrights to Shinya Tsukamoto's Venice title, Vital.Le Livre A Rendreis a Euros 3m picture which focuses ...
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Italian producers denounce funding crisis
Italian state funding for local films has stalled for oversix months, while the government has recently made new and drastic cuts to itsentertainment fund.Now, a group of top Italian producers, including Rai Cinemaand Fininvest-owned Medusa, have taken a full-page advertisement in a nationalnewspaper asking prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to take ...
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Italy's Metacinema acquires three new titles
Metacinema, Giovanni Tamberi's Italian production,distribution and communications outfit has picked up Italian rights to threenew films, including Venice Critics Week opener, P.S. I Love You.P.S. I Love You,which marks Dylan Kidd's follow-up to his award-winning debut Rodger Dodger, is a romantic comedyabout a 38-year-old New York woman who believes her ...
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ITALY 4 August
On a devastatingly bad weekend at the Italian box office,Cinetel, which monitors around 80% of Italian screens, reported that earningsslumped a huge 48% compared to the previous week.There were no changes in the positions of the first ninefilms at the box office, and earnings for the top movies were meagre: ...
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Venice unveils inaugural Directors' Fortnight
Venice Days, the Lido's first ever Directors Fortnight, willfeature 12 titles, including UK director Shane Meadows' Dead Man's Shoes and Danish director Anders Ronnow-Klarlund's Strings.The section, which is headed by Giorgio Gosetti, formerdirector of Italia Cinema, will also include two French films, three Italianfilms, and one Russian film.In all, seven ...
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Fandango flies with Vicari, Crialese features
Domenico Procacci's Italian production and distributionoutfit Fandango is producing a new feature by Roman director Daniele Vicari,whose debut, V-Max (Velocita' Massima) won the prestigious Donatelloaward for best first film.The Euros 2m film, named L'Orizzonte Degli Eventi,began filming last week around the Gran Sasso mountainous area of central Italyand will shoot ...
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It's Mueller time: Venice overflows with US talent
The Venice Film Festival (Sep 1-11) has unveiled an eclecticline-up which features a strong US contingent, celebrated European auteurs and,following in the footsteps of Cannes, the Lido's first animation in competitionin thirty years.In presenting the line-up on Thursday in Rome, thefestival's new artistic director, Marco Mueller, singled out the strength ...
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Venice unveils 'pre-screenings' event
As part of a new drive to boost market interest in theVenice Film Festival, around 30-40 international buyers are expected to beinvited to the Venice pre-Screenings, which will take place on the Lido fromAugust 30 to September 1.The pre-Screenings will be managed by AIP (AudiovisualIndustry Promotion), the new organisation formed ...
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ITALY 28 July
Another slow mid-summer weekend at the Italian box officesaw just two new releases: Mediafilm's House Of The Dead and IstitutoLuce's A Good Lawyer's Wife.Dead opened on 99screens at number three but failed to toppleeither The StepfordWives or Timeline. The picturegrossed $231,601, scoring a solid average of $2,339 per screen.Istituto Luce ...
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Tarantino, Dante to be Venice 'godfathers'
Venice has announced that Quentin Tarantino and Joe Dantewill be on the Lido for the duration of the festival as "godfathers"of the festival's "Italian Kings of the B Movies" retrospective.The sidebar will screen 20-25 restored Italian genre movies,which will then be distributed after the festival both on DVD and in ...
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Boorman to preside over Venice jury
Director John Boorman will preside over the competition juryat the upcoming 61st Venice Film Festival, with other jury members set toinclude Spike Lee and Scarlett Johansson, the Biennale has announced.Boorman, Lee and Johansson will be joined on the festival's main Venice 61 jury by Italian Oscar-winning film editor Pietro Scalia ...
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Mercero's 4th Floor wins top Giffoni prize
Spanish director Antonio Mercero's 4th Floor has scooped the top Golden Gryphon prize at theGiffoni Film Festival (17-24 July), the Italian youth-themed festival which isnow set to export its winning formula to Albania, Los Angeles and Australia.4th Floor tells thestory of a group of 15-year-olds who are all fighting for ...
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Kidd's PS to open Venice Critics' Week
PS I Love You, Dylan Kidd's follow-up to Rodger Dodger, will open Critics' Week at the upcoming Venice Film Festival(Sep 1-11).The romantic comedy, written by Kidd and Helen Schulman,stars LauraLinney as a 38-year-old admissions director at New York's ColumbiaUniversity who believes that her former boyfriend has been reincarnated.Earlier this month, ...
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ITALY 23 July
Columbia Tristar's street dancing movie You Got Served opened at number three in Italy last weekend,grossing $226,32 from 99 screens.The Chris Stokes film earned the box office's second highestscreen average, at $2,286, but still failed to dethrone either Eagle Pictures'sTimeline, which remained at number onewith a total gross of $1,512,661, ...
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Sky Italia strikes landmark deal with Italian producers
After months of negotiations, Italy's only pay-TVplatform, Sky Italia, has signed a landmark deal with Italian producers toinvest Euros 46m in Italian cinema over the next two years.Under thedeal, Sky will buy all Italian films whose pay-tv rights became available fromJanuary 1, 2004 and which have registered over 25,000 admissions ...
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Roma Studios ravaged by fire
A fire hasravaged Roma Studios, destroying the set of ABC's ancient Rome series, Empireand a large part of the studio.It took 12fire engines five hours to extinguish the fire, which destroyed an area of2,800 square metres. Damage is estimated to in the region of 'tens ofthousands of Euros,' according to ...
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Ferri juggles Faenza, Benigni projects
EldaFerri, the Italian producer behind Gianni Amelio's likely Venice contender, TheKeys To The House, is lining up two new features by critically-acclaimeddirector Roberto Faenza.Faenza,whose last film The Soul Keeper was a critical and box-office hit inItaly where it grossed over Euros 3.5m, is to shoot a new picture adapted fromElena ...
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Giffoni unveils youthful line-up
David Carradine, Ben Kingsley, Ken Loach and actress MariaGrazia Cucinotta are among the guests who will attend the 34th edition of theGiffoni Film Festival (July 17-24), one of the leading festivals in the worlddedicated to youth-themed films.The festival's competition line-up includes Maria Full ofGrace, Les Choristes, The Wooden Camera, Chilean ...
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Ferretti hired to revamp Venice's Palazzo del Cinema
The Venice Biennale is revamping the front of its historicPalazzo del Cinema to give it a glitzy new look for the upcoming 61st VeniceFilm Festival (Sept 1-11, 2004).Biennale president Davide Croff has hired world-renown setdesigner Dante Ferretti (Gangs of New York, Cold Mountain, The Aviator) to work on the Palazzo's ...