Mexico City Winners

The Mexico City Contemporary Film Festival names its top films, with Romania, Mexico, Hungary (photo above) and Portugal taking the top awards.
The Romanian comedy Bucharest won best film while Mexico’s Born Without won best documentary. Born Without, by director Eva Norvind, tells the story of a man born without arms who plays the harmonica for survival.
The feature film Turtle Family, by Mexican director Ruben Imaz, won the Audience Award and award for best first film.
http://tdb.berlinale-talentcampus.de/campus/talent/leonardo-ortizgris/profile
And it was a tie for Best Director. Hungarian filmmaker Gyorgi Palfi won for Taxidermia, which was lauded across Europe as a top film, and Portugal's Hugo Vieira da Silva won for Body Rice. Taxidermia tells the story of three generations of men, including a soldier, a speed eater and a taxidermist. (photo above)
http://www.taxidermia.hu/indexen.htm

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117960506.html?categoryid=19&cs=1

Deadline Approaches for Hungarian Artists in Residence/Film Festival

A.I.R. International Artists Residencies - FilmFest -2007- Hungary

The Hungarian Multicultural Center is currently accepting applications for the
Csopak/Balatonfured - Hungarian International Artist/Writer Residency Program 2007
Residency
Submission Deadline: March 15, 2007
Program Dates: May 21 - June 13; June 18 - July 11; July 16 - August 8, 2007
FilmFest
Submission Deadline: April 15, 2007
Program Dates: August 7-10, 2007
The HMC invites interested visual artists, experimental short film makers and writers
to submit application for its residency/FilmFest programs in Hungary .
Exhibition/FilmFest are arranged at Congress Center, Balatonfured Also, we are
organizing an exhibition/FilmFest for the 2006, 2007 participants at Vizivarosi
Gallery, Budapest in 2008.
For further information including the Guidelines for Submissions, Application Form
and Answers to Frequently Asked Questions, please visit HMC's website at
http://www.hungaria n-multicultural- center.com
The program is open to international artists working in all disciplines who are
engaged in the research, development or creation of work.
For application form or questions regarding the International Artist Residency
please write to bszechy@yahoo. com

Guggenheim Film Fund

Guggenheim Sets Up
Film Fund
Gregg Goldstein
Hollywood Reporter
March 5, 2007
NEW YORK -- Financial services firm Guggenheim Partners is launching its first film finance initiative, spearheaded by founding ThinkFilm executive Daniel Katz (pictured at left) .

The initiative is part of a Guggenheim division that manages $10 billion. Katz will lead funding for independent feature producers with slates of about four to 12 films budgeted in the $5 million-$12 million range. The money will be used for production financing, P&A and distribution financing for independent features, studio films and corporate financing as opportunities arise.

"We're trying to empower filmmakers that are businessmen," Katz said. "This initiative is primarily for a handful of first-class producers interested in putting together a library of films and expanding the scope of their abilities, giving them the power to sell these films on their own. Studios are focusing almost exclusively on tentpoles and franchises, and we'd love to be the financial engine to fill the void they've left behind."

The practice also will support existing production companies that want to increase their production capacity, own more of their content, beef up their libraries and maintain and control the way their films are distributed.

Katz said he began meeting with people in the entertainment financing arena during his trip last year to the Festival de Cannes, and he approached Guggenheim with the idea for the venture a few months ago while he was ThinkFilm's vp acquisitions. Guggenheim had been considering a similar enterprise.

While it's an unusual transition for someone on the creative side of the business to move into film financing, the executive said his background makes him well-suited for his new position.

"After more than eight years in production, distribution, acquisitions and international sales, I know what it's like to be on the ground and experience the same obstacles and challenges as independent producers," Katz said, "so I'm better equipped to empower and invest in them and know what they need to succeed."

Katz served as an executive producer on two ThinkFilm projects, the Beastie Boys concert film "Awesome: I Fuckin' Shot That!" and the upcoming bestiality docu "Zoo." Since his start as ThinkFilm director of acquisitions when the indie distributor was launched in 2001, Katz was instrumental in finding such indie hits as the comedy docu "The Aristocrats," the Oscar-nominated drama "Half Nelson" and the Oscar-winning docu "Born Into Brothels."

Guggenheim Partners, founded in 1999 with backing from the Guggenheim family's more than century-old fortune, supervises more than $110 billion in assets and provides capital markets services and portfolio and risk management advice.

http://hollywoodreporter.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Guggenheim+sets+up+film+fund&expire=&urlID=21406304&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Fhr%2Fcontent_display%2Ffilm%2Fnews%2Fe3ic18e3a756f945d08e2dd212fde74f67f&partnerID=3690

Here Comes Hollywood

With a win for Best Foreign Language Film, Hollywood filmakers have swooped in on Germany's The Lives of Others and plan a remake.
Former Miramax heads, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, have teamed with Anthony Minghella and Sidney Pollack to bring the story to a wider, global audience.
The film was written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck in his first-time full-length feature.
http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=106775

"Lives of Others set for Hollywood remake Staff and agencies"
Thursday March 1, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Fresh from its success at this week's Oscars, The Lives of Others is to be overhauled as a Hollywood thriller. The German-language production won the Academy award for best foreign film to add to the European film award it won last December. The American remake is being arranged by former Miramax bosses Bob and Harvey Weinstein in tandem with the Oscar-winning film-makers Anthony Minghella and Sidney Pollack. Since its opening on limited release in the U.S. three weeks ago, The Lives of Others has made a respectable $1.3m. But a big budget, English-language version would guarantee a wider audience. "We would just desperately love for that film to be something that reaches more people," Pollack told Variety magazine. "We haven't gotten locked into making it yet, but we're working hard at trying to get it made." Written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The Lives of Others plays out in 1980s East Germany, at the tail end of the cold war. The plot charts the experiences of a Stasi agent who is ordered by the East German culture minister to wiretap the home of a local poet. Von Donnersmarck's film has been compared to Francis Ford Coppola's paranoid thriller The Conversation and has been seen as an antidote to the cold war "ostalgie" peddled by other recent German films such as Good Bye Lenin.

Fresh off of his Academy Award for cinematography for Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo Navarro has reportedly agreed to team with Bollywood.

Navarro has agreed to work with Bollywood director Vishal Bharadwaj for a short film on AIDS. The 11-minute film is being created via funding from the Bill Gates Foundation. The film is slated to begin filming March 10 and will be called Blood Brothers.

"It would be in the thriller format. We don't want to preach to the audience. We want to entertain them. The message shouldn't come out as boring. All of us directors – Mira Nair, Farhan Akhtar, Santosh Sivan - are making films on various aspects of the HIV problem,” Bharadwaj told Glamsham magazine. http://www.glamsham.com/movies/scoops/07/mar/01_aids_vishal_bharadwaj_omkara_amitabh_bachchan.asp

Navarro has photographed major films like A Night At The Museum, Hellboy and Stuart Little and has been a favorite of Texan Robert Rodrigues, filming Spy Kids, Desperado (aka El Mariachi 2) and From Dusk Til Dawn. Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro used Navarro on Hellboy and their Hellboy II is set for release in 2008.

While shooting Pan, Navarro used Moviecam compacts outfitted with Ultra Prime size lenses and variable primes (stocks 5246 and 5217 tungsten stock for daylight; 5218 for nighttime) He shot in format 1:85.

Navarro was born in Mexico City in 1955. He studied sociology at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Filmography
http://www.cinematographers.nl/PaginasDoPh/navarro.htm
http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=104126

Color Me Kubrick

A new film co-starring Richard E. Grant arrives in the next few weeks. Grant, prolific Mbabane native, plays a character named Jasper opposite actor John Malkovich.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001290/

www.richard-e-grant.com
Malokvich (above) plays Alan Conway in this true story about a man who pretends to be legendary film director Stanley Kubrick during the filming of Eyes Wide Shut in London. Kubrick, although exceedingly famous, is not a known face -- like Steven Speilberg. And Conway impersonates Kubrick with almost no knowledge of the director's films or personal life. Color Me Kubrick is directed by Brian Cook.
Now for the unusual distribution plan. Color Me Kubrick will open in theaters across the country on March 23 and will be shown digitally in Landmark Theaters where available. On the same night, HDNet Moview will broadcast the television premiere of Color Me Kubrick twice, at 8:05 p.m. and 11:05 p.m. EST. Magnolia Home Entertainment will release the DVD thorugh retail outlets on Tuesday, March 27, immediately following the theatrical release.
http://www.colormekubrick.com/

Pan Africa Film and Television Festival Update

Listen to Voice of America's report on the festival's first documentary competition.

http://www.voanews.com/english/Entertainment/2007-03-01-voa14.cfm?renderforprint=1

Africa United

Over the weekend the biggest film festival in Africa opened. The biennial Pan-African Film and Television Festival opened in Burkina Faso.

News out of Africa has been limited on the festival, but this great overview piece ranFriday and Saturday in many African newspapers.

Africa's biggest film festival opens in Ouagadougou
Boureima Hama Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
2.23.07

Africa's biggest film festival opens on Saturday in the capital of Burkina Faso hoping for a revival of the continent's ailing cinema industry.

The Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, or Fespaco, which runs from February 24 to March 3, is a two-yearly event gathering more than 3 000 film types from across the continent, from South Africa through Mali to Morocco, as well as from the African diaspora.

Ironically, this year's event takes place as the curtain comes down for cinemas across the continent, but also as African films rake up top international awards, feeding hopes of a new golden age in the years to come.

South Africa's Tsotsi last year won Oscar celebrity status, picking up Hollywood's coveted best foreign-language film award. It is one of two South African entries among the 20 feature films competing for Fespaco's top prize, the Etalon d'Or de Yennenga or Golden Stallion of Yennenga.

Also competing for the top Fespaco award this year are two films from Chad, including one that last September won the Venice Film Festival's Special Jury Prize -- Daratt (Dry Season) by Mahamet-Saleh Haroun.

Haroun, who is 45 and has shot three feature films, plans to buy a block of land in the Chadian capital Ndjamena to build a cinema there.

With the exception of South Africa and Nigeria, cinema houses have been closing down one after the other across the continent, the African monthly Continental said in its February issue. Senegal's last cinema shut down last year, Congo-Brazzaville's seven cinemas have been sold to churches, of the eight cinemas in the Cameroonian capital Yaounde, only one has survived.

"African film is in crisis and the closure of cinemas is only the most visible sign," the magazine said.

After receiving state backing in the post-independence 1970s, producers, directors and distributors have largely had to fend for themselves since the 1990s, when governments cut funding due to pressure from world financial institutions.

With little funding, few to no cinema schools and a poverty-struck public, African film-makers have had to look abroad for support.

Gabon's entry for the top award, L'Ombre de Liberte (Shadow of Freedom) by Imunga Ivanga, for example, was five years in the making, three of them spent drumming up funds for the modest budget of just under €1-million ($1.3 million).

Also competing for the Etalon d'Or de Yennenga -- a reference to the mythical founder of the Mossi empire, whose descendants make up 40% of the country's 14-million people -- are films from Benin, Burkina Faso (three), Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea (three), Mali, Morocco, Nigeria and Senegal and the north African states of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

The 20th edition of Fespaco will also feature awards for TV-video films and sitcoms as well as for short movies.

And the African International Film and Television Market (MICA) will be held on the sidelines in a bid to help buyers and distributors to screen African film. - Sapa-AFP

Tsotis Competes for Best Film

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6404013.stm

New Releases

This week's new releases to DVD features several scary movies and several scar people.

Conejo en la Luna (2006), directed by Jorge Ramírez Suárez, tells the story of a couple framed for murdering a politician and suddenly find themselves emersed in the world of corrupt government officials, bad cops and murderous henchmen, according to Netflix.

Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965), directed by Ishirô Honda, features another wrongly accused individual. After being blamed for destroying the countryside a 20-foot-tall mutant fights it out with the guilty monster/reptile Baragon. Honda was the director of the original Godzilla movie.

Perversion Story (1969), directed by Lucio Fulci, is a high-definition transfer from the original vault negative. The mystery mixes obsession, deceit, sex and murder when a doctor turns Casanova and begins dating a stripper.

Prayer Beads (2006 series), directed by Masahiro Okano, this movie blends realistic animation and live action in nine horror stories of karma and fate.

Synesthesia (2005), directed by Toru Matsurra, features a man with a strange sensory disease making him the only person in the world who can stop a serial killer.

The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987), directed by Yuki Yukite Shingun, is a documentary in which Shingun tries to determine the reason for unexplained deaths of soldiers during World War II. He blends research and in-your-face interviews with former military officers, accusing them of war crimes.

New York Times: New Release Review

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/movies/homevideo/27dvd.html?8dpc