All articles by Sandy George – Page 28
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News
Ozparliament tables legislation forunified film agency
Australia's Federal Parliament today tabled legislation to establish a new single film agency, Screen Australia. It is expected to be debated in early March and then passed. Screen Australia will come into being July 1 andencompass the responsibilities of the investment agency Film Finance Corporation Australia, the Australian Film Commission ...
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News
May start for Chinese-Australian co-prod The Last Dragon
The Chinese-Australian co-production The Last Dragon is to be the first feature for AMPCO Films, the company set up last year by Adelaide producer/director Mario Andreacchio with the aim of making quality family films for the international marketplace.Working with independent production company Beijing Rosat Film & TV Production, the 4K ...
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Features
Australia-UK - See-saw on the rise
When London-based acquisitions executive Iain Canning and Sydney producer Emile Sherman vie for the best projects under their new See-Saw production banner, the ace up their sleeve will be a first-look deal with Paramount Pictures International (PPI) to invest equity.They also hope their pooled skills and experience will be a ...
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News
Warner Bros taps Oz tax break for next Harry Potter
Warner Bros is set to be the first company to trigger the 15% post-production, digital and visual effects (PDV) offset introduced by the Australian government in May last year. The studio has signed with local effects house Rising Sun Pictures for some of the visual effects on Harry Potter And ...
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News
New Zealand box office up in 2007 but no records fall
The $118.93m (NZ$151.74m) worth of tickets sold at New Zealand cinemas in 2007 exceeded the previous year by 3.6%, but fell short of 2003, the country's stand-out year in terms of gross box office. 'All the blockbusters did well in the middle of the year, yes, but business petered out ...
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News
Canning, Sherman launch Aus/UK production outfit See-Saw
UK-based acquisitions executive Iain Canning and Australian producer Emile Sherman have launched Australia/UK-based production outfit See-Saw Films. One of the first credits for the new company will be as producer of an English-language remake of writer/director Guillem Morale's 2004 Spanish mystery thriller The Uninvited Guests (El Habitante Incierto).Canning and Sherman ...
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News
Paramount Australia pacts with start-up Transmission
Dendy Films' executives Andrew Mackie and Richard Payten are leaving the company to establish a new Australian/New Zealand distributor, Transmission, that will conduct most of its business through a joint venture with Paramount's local theatrical and home entertainment divisions. The deal was negotiated with Paramount in the US and is ...
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News
Edgerton debut to feature in AFC's IndiVision Lab
The Australian Film Commission (AFC) has unveiled the eight low-budget projects that will take part its IndiVision Project Lab, one of which will be the directorial debut of Kinky Boots star Joel Edgerton. Edgerton's film The Professor is a thriller about a top forensic scientist investigating a family murder-suicide, who ...
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News
Hewison to exit Australian Film Institute before 50th awards
In the lead up to its 50th anniversary awards and in the wake of James Hewison's resignation, the Australian Film Institute has begun searching for a new chief executive.AFI chair Morry Schwartz told The Age newspaper that he hoped the organisation would be able to get someone of the same ...
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News
ScreenWest's low-budget initiative gets Wasted
Teen thriller Wasted will be the third feature supported under West Coast Visions, the low-budget initiative run by Western Australia 's film agency ScreenWest. A high school party goes dangerously off the rails in what will be the debut film of writer/director Ben C. Lucas, but one teenager finds that ...
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News
Melbourne Film Festival fund blesses Kokkinos
Blessed, the third feature from Ana Kokkinos (Head On, The Book Of Revelations), has taken a big step closer to going into production with a cash offer from the Melbourne International Film Festival's (MIFF) production fund. MIFF's Premiere Fund provides small amounts of strategic investment and has just announced four ...
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News
Australian Directors Guild to wait before replacing Macrae
The Australian Directors Guild (ADG) is now without an executive director following the surprise departure of Drew Macrae but the organisation will not invite applications for the role until after the next board meeting in early February. 'We have been rebuilding for 18 months and are still in the process ...
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News
Phillip Noyce honoured as Australia charmsHollywood
Director Phillip Noyce was honoured on Saturday night in Hollywood for his significant contribution to the Australian film industry and for excellence in promoting Australia in the US.Noyce was presented with his award by Harrison Ford, the star of two of his US films, Patriot Games and Clear and Present ...
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News
Oz box office up 3% for second biggest year on record
Australians spent $801.7m (A$895m) on going to the movies in 2007, making it the second best year on record in terms of annual gross box office.The Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia (MPDAA) released the figure today and said it represented a 3% rise on the previous year. Only in ...
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News
Indian production Victory drawn into test cricket controversy
There are conflicting reports on whether Victory, an Indian film shooting all this month in Australia, has been affected by a controversy that has greatly intensified in the last 24 hours around the current test cricket series being played between India and Australia. Producer Vivek Aggarwal said none of the ...
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News
Western Australian mining boom helps funding for thriller Crush
Few feature films are made in Western Australia but producer Deidre Kitcher said that profits from the area's mining boom lead to the thriller Crush going into production yesterday.She and co-directors John V Soto and Jeff Gerritsen convinced six investors to put up the $1.76m (A$2m) budget with the help ...
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Features
Botswana - Production Number One
It is fitting that when he started filming, Anthony Minghella did not know if The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency would end up as a feature or a TV film. After all, this is a director who made his international name as an Oscar winner for such sweeping cinematic epics ...
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News
Luhrmann's Australia helps double Oz production to $232m
On first glance, figures released today indicate that more money is being poured into Australian features, which are traditionally made for very low budgets, but the improvement is illusionary. The numbers in the Australian Film Commission's (AFC) annual production survey only look healthier than the previous year because they have ...
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News
Indigenous film-makers line up To Hell And Back, Samson and Delilah
Australia 's indigenous film-makers are telling their own stories with two features being prepared. Richard Frankland's road movie To Hell and Back finished its six-week shoot in Western Australia last week. Financed by Film Finance Corporation Australia and the local state agency ScreenWest, it has been dubbed the Australian version ...
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News
Australia's Abacus Fund backs Geena Davis project Accidents Happen
A film fund aimed at raising $26.4m (A$30m) for the production of Australian films has been formed, with the first beneficiary being Andrew Lancaster's debut film Accidents Happen, starring American actress Geena Davis (Thelma & Louise). Accidents Happen was one of five films which yesterday won investment from the ...