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All articles by Melanie Rodier – Page 37
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Kirch, Mediaset dismantle top-heavy Epsilon
Epsilon, the joint venture film finance outfit involving the Kirch group and Italy's Mediaset, has been wound up after two years of internal wrangling.The two companies' film production label Emotion and the TV arm Evision will live on as 50-50 joint ventures controlled by the parent companies. But their ambitions ...
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Italy's Mifed cancels Gala, boosts security
In a sign of solidarity to the US for last week's terrorist attacks, Mifed has announced the cancellation of a gala evening which had been arranged to showcase Italian cinema during the market. Instead, organisers said the (undisclosed) budget which had been allocated for the event will be given to ...
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Mediaset posts first half profit dip of 3.3%
Mediaset, the leading private Italian broadcaster founded by Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, has posted first half losses in gross profits of 3.3% to Euros 450.3m. The company's consolidated balance, however, was up 6% to Euros 500.3m, with total turnover rising 6.5% to Euros 1.37 billion.Meanwhile, the broadcaster posted record audience ...
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Mueller prepares international production slate
Marco Mueller, producer of Babak Payami's Venice prize winner Secret Ballot and executive producer of Sarajevo winner and Cannes favourite No Man's Land, says he will soon start producing Italian feature films in addition to lining up South American and African titles for the production slate that will launch his ...
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Italy's Telepiu and Stream merger threatened
Italy's antitrust watchdog has cast a deep shadow over the planned merger of Italian cable TV giants, Telepiu and Stream. Despite widespread industry confidence that the merger would receive swift regulatory approval, the antitrust authority has opened an investigation into the deal which had been agreed by the pay-TV groups' ...
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Italy's Saint-Vincent Prize adds TV drama
Italy's Saint-Vincent Prize, a leading festival designed to promote Italian cinema abroad, has announced that for the first time this year it will dedicate a section to the fast-growing field of Italian TV drama.The new TV competition, sponsored by Italy's weekly TV Sorrizi & Canzoni magazine, will be judged both ...
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Rai cinema seeking European production partners
Confirming its intention to build up a solid international presence, Italy's Rai Cinema announced that it is actively seeking European co-production partners in Germany, Spain and France. Giuliano Montaldo, chairman of Rai Cinema, the Rome-based film arm of public broadcaster Rai Cinema, said the company plans to announce a European ...
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Movieweb plans 12 Italian films per year
Movieweb, the Italian production company which has backed producer Rita Rusic's latest movies after her split from husband Vittorio Cecchi Gori, has revealed plans to become the country's leading production outfit with its bid to boost its production slate to 12 movies a year. Movieweb, which is managed and funded ...
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RAI accused of monopolising Italian distrib sector
On the weekend that it released its first ever title, RAI Cinema and StudioCanal's new theatrical offshoot 01 Distribuzione was accused of "unfairly monopolising" the [Italian] distribution sector.The charges, made by Giampaolo Sodano, president of the national distributors association, UNIDIM, and Aurelio De Laurentiis, president of indie distributor FilmAuro, have ...
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Italy's Cortesi prepares new Infascelli project
Massimo Cortesi, head of the Rome-based company Navert Film which co-produced Claire Peploe's Triumph of Love and Giuseppe Bertolucci's Love Probably - both screening in Venice - is lining up a new film to be directed by Italy's Fiorella Infascelli. Cortesi said he is looking for international co-production partners to ...
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Italy doubles script development funding
The Italian Cultural Department has more than doubled the funding it started allocating last year for script development, giving state distributor Istituto Luce the task of managing the project for the second year in a row. Istituto Luce president Angelo Guglielmi confirmed that the distributor has now set up a ...
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Taylor in the pink as amFAR raises $700,000
All eyes were on the glowing, pink-attired Elisabeth Taylor, at the second glittering AmfAR gala to be held during the Venice film festival. The auction of luxury items during the Friday night (Aug 31) event raised more than $700,000 in support of the American Foundation For AIDS Research, organisers confirmed ...
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Mikado grabs Italian rights to Lagaan epic
Rome-based distribution outfit Mikado has scooped up Italian rights to Ashutosh Gowarkier's sprawling Bollywood epic, Lagaan (aka Once Upon A Time In India). Mikado's Luigi Musini said the distribution company had picked up the film after it screened at the Locarno Film Festival in August, where it met with an ...
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Liberato's outfit boards Gucci
Andrea De Liberato's Rome-based production outfit Poetiche Cinematografiche, which produced Venice 58 competition title Luna Rossa, has boarded director Bakhtiar Khudojnazarov's upcoming film, currently known as Gucci.The Tajikistan filmmaker's new project, about three young street thugs who carry out robberies so that they can buy designer clothes, starts shooting later ...
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Italian government set to agree film tax shelter
For the first time in post-war history, the Italian government looks set to ratify a national tax shelter to help fund the entertainment industry. Speaking during a talk held at the Venice Film Festival, Carmelo Rocca, the cultural department under-secretary, confirmed that Culture Minister Giuliano Urbani is fully backing the ...
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Prix Italia to collaborate with NATPE and CBS
NATPE president Bruce Johansen and PBS chief Pat Mitchell will be guest speakers at the 53rd edition of the Prix Italia, the prestigious international television and radio awards held annually in Italy, following a long-term collaboration agreement sealed by the US television market and Prix Italia. As a result of ...
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Berlusconi daughter to head Italy's Medusa
Marina Berlusconi, daughter of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, has been appointed president of Finvinvest film arm Medusa Film. The move at Italy's leading film production and distribution outfit, follows the death of Carlo Bernasconi last month."Marina Berlusconi's appointment to the head of the company is a strong sign of ...
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Telemontecarlo's future questioned after takeover
As Italian tyre and cable manufacturer Pirelli, backed by the Benetton retail empire, took over Telecom Italia, Europe's fifth-biggest telecom group, this weekend, the future of the telecom's financially beleaguered TV station, Telemontecarlo, was again called into question.Just two months ago, Italy's highest appeals court cleared Telecom Italia and multimedia ...
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Big budget films boost Italian industry confidence
With a total of 12 Italian films showing in various sections of this year's Venice film festival, and a raft of big budget films in the pipeline from the likes of Roberto Benigni and Franco Zeffirelli, the Italian film industry is feeling more positive than usual.After last year's bleak patch, ...
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Venice selection expansion hailed as double treat
The programming innovations revealed for the 58th Venice Film Festival - which this year heralds the advent of an additional competition line-up known as The Cinema Of The Present - have been greeted with generally favourable industry reactions.Many have praised the inclusion of more innovative and 'fringe' titles into the ...