Category: International

MUMBAI: With an aim to provide a platform for indigenous as well as non-indigenous community toresearch, document, interact and develop information on indigenous cultures, traditions,languages, issues, knowledge and wisdom through the visual medium, the four-day 5th NepalInternational Indigenous Film Festival (NIIFF 2011) organised by Indigenous Film Archive (IFA)began in Kathmandu on 22 April.

Alike earlier editions of NIIFF, this edition also eyes for international recognition of Nepali filmindustry and indigenous community of Nepal.

Said Navin Subba of the NIFF, “In our first attempt, we hardly got few international participants but now there are dozens of films and documentaries made by international film makers.”According to Subba, in past couple of decades Nepal film industry used to copy Bollywood and Hollywood movies but at present, the industry and Nepali filmmakers have the quality to tell their own Nepali tales.

A total of 42 films from 20 countries and regions including Australia, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, China‘s Taiwan, Canada, Finland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, Norway, Palestine, Peru, Sweden, Russia, Vietnam and the United States will be shown at the festival.Among them eight Nepali films including two fictions and six documentaries are being screened.

Fourteen filmmakers and festival organizers are participating in person from eight countries and regions .

78year -old Canadian producer Alanis Obomsawin is a Guest of Honor at the festival.

Pastor also ruled in favor of a prosecution request to play video clips from the last two days of Jackson‘s stage rehearsals. The clips show Jackson rehearsing the songs “The Way You Make Me Feel” and “Earth Song”. Some of the rehearsal footage was turned into the posthumous hit film “This Is It.”

The judge said the footage of Jackson was “relevant as to his demeanor.” Murray‘s attorneys had argued that the rehearsal footage was edited and misleading.

Deputy district attorney David Walgren said he wanted the jurors to see the clips because they show Jackson as an “energetic” man who “fully intends in participating in this tour (and) fully intends on living out his life.”

Jackson at the time was days away from beginning a series of comeback concerts in London.

Pastor said he will also allow testimony from women with whom prosecutors say Murray, who was married at the time, had a “personal and social relationship.” But the judge did not want

jurors to hear about Murray meeting two of the women at strip clubs.

The judge also ruled against a defense request to delve into Jackson‘s troubled finances and numerous lawsuits against him. Pastor said he did not want the trial to become a “salacious analysis of personal financial issues.”
 

MUMBAI: China‘s commercial director, Feng Xiaogang, has said that his upcoming film would be set against the 1942 drought that killed three million of his Chinese brethren.

He announced that he will adapt Liu Zhenyun‘s 1993 novel ‘Remembering 1942’ that examines the suffering in China‘s Henan province when the then-ruling Nationalist Party was pre-occupied with a Japanese invasion.

Right now Feng is designing the sets of the film and is looking for a summer 2012 release of his yet unnamed film.

Chinese studio Huayi Brothers will invest 150 million Chinese yuan ($23 million) in the project. Feng released another disaster drama last year. The earthquake epic Aftershock brought in 673 million yuan ($103 million).

MUMBAI: Martin Scorsese‘s The Union premiered on the opening night of the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival at The Winter Garden, World Financial Plaza in New York on 21 April.

The Tribeca Film Festival helps filmmakers reach the broadest possible audience, enable the international film community and general public to experience the power of cinema and promote New York City as a major filmmaking center. 

Founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff in 2001 following the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Tribeca Film Festival brings the industry and community together around storytelling.

The Tribeca Film Festival has screened more than 1,100 films from more than 80 countries since its first edition in 2002.

Since its inception, the festival has attracted an international audience of more than 3 million attendees and has generated an estimated $600 million in economic activity for New York City.

The festival will run till 1 May.

MUMBAI: Tim Hetherington who co-directed Restrepo is no more.

Hetherington was killed while covering the Libyan conflict on Wednesday.

was An award winning photographer and documentary filmmaker, Hetherington was covering the conflict at Libya for a photo agency.

His co-produced and co-directed venture Restrepo with Sebastian Junger won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy award. The film, a feature-length documentary, chronicles the deployment of a platoon of US soldiers in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley.

Hetherington has reported on conflict and human rights issues for more than ten years. His coverage of the 2003 Liberian civil war resulted in the film Liberia: an Uncivil War
 

MUMBAI:Voicing their dismay of DirecTV’s efforts to distribute films eight weeks after their releases, a number of top Hollywood directors like James Cameron and Peter Jackson and twenty one others along with the National Association of Theatre Owners have written an open letter.

DirecTV is planning to sell films while they are still in theatres and has made agreements with studio executives to sell them for about $30 each. The previous release date was four months after the theatrical release. 

In the letter, the directors said, “As leaders in the creative community, we ask for a seat at the table. We want to hear the studios‘ plans for how this new distribution model will affect the future of the industry that we love. And until that happens, we ask that our studio partners do not rashly undermine the current – and successful – system of releasing films in a sequential distribution window that encourages movie lovers to see films in the optimum, and most profitable, exhibition arena: the movie theaters of America.”

The companies who agreed to terms with DirecTV were Sony, Fox Searchlight and Warner Bros. They plan to start with the release of Just Go With It, which has only been in theaters for 70 days.

MUMBAI: The Cannes Film Festival has selected Jude Law and Uma Thurman as judges of this year’s Festival scheduled to be held from 11 to 22 May.

While Law and Thurman would represent UK and US respectively in the competition jury panel headed by Robert De Niro, French director Olivier Assayas, producer Nansun Shi, critic-writer Linn Ullmann, director Johnnie To, actress-producer Martina Gusman and director Mahamat Saleh Haroun from Chad would work also be part of the jury. 

The in-competition films, announced last week includes Paolo Sorrentino‘s This Must Be the Place, Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life and Lynne Ramsay‘s We Need to Talk About Kevin.

MUMBAI: The world’s first 3D adult film Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy has been running to packed houses since it opened in Hong Kong last week. The scenario outside theatres showing the film saw packed audiences buying tickets priced three times the regular rates.

Adapted from the Chinese novel ‘The Carnal Prayer Mat, the film directed by Hong Kong-based director Christopher Suen, was promoted with the tag line ‘world’s first IMAX 3D erotic movie’.

The film chronicles the story of a young man who, after being introduced to the erotic world of a duke, realises his ex-wife is the love of his life. The success of the concept has made some US adult movie makers explore the idea.

US-based pornographic magazine Hustler is in the process of making a 3D adult movie with Avatar like characters. Italian director Tinto Brass has announced that he would recreate his 1979 sex themed period film Caligula in 3D.

China has already banned Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy and more countries are reported to follow suit.

MUMBAI: Walt Disney Co.‘s Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides will release in China on 20 May, day-and-date with the film’s US and most of the world release including 3D and IMAX-3D,it is understood.

The film will be one of the 20 imported titles allowed to recoup between 13-17 percent of its box-office gross in China every year, where the state-run China Film Group and Huaxia Film Distribution control Hollywood imports and distribution.

Pirates 4 brings back Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow and revives the franchise’s original bad guy, Geoffrey Rush. It also adds Penelope Cruz as a beautiful trickster who tangles romantically with Captain Jack and Ian McShane as a fearsome new villain.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World‘s End released in China in June 2007, in the pre-3D era here and without the benefit of a lead-in from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man‘s Chest, which was banned for its supernatural themes. Nonetheless, Pirates 3 grossed over 120 million yuan (about $18.3 million).

The first film is Jason Stutter‘s crime comedy, Predicament, while the second is Simone Horrocks‘ début feature After the Waterfall. Both the films will screen as part of the festival‘s film panorama programme. 

The two films would join a line-up of top films from around the world, including this year‘s Academy Award winners, New Zealand Film Commission chief executive Graeme Mason said.

The festival would be held from 23 to 28 April.

MUMBAI: Michael Sarrazin, remembered for his role opposite Jane Fonda in the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don‘t They? expired in Montreal after a brief encounter with Cancer. He was 70.

It may be remembered that Horses was nominated for nine Oscars and won a single statuette for Gig Young‘s supporting role in the film in which Fonda played a suicidal woman who heads to Hollywood and meets up with Sarrazin‘s character, an aspiring director. The two enter a grueling dance marathon during which she tries to convince him to shoot her and put her out of her misery. 

Besides Tunisia, more than 12 countries took part in the festival, including Japan, Mexico and the United States. All films featured were categorised as writers‘ films or films belonging to the independent cinema as opposed to commercial films.

Sarrazin was born Jacques Michel Andre Sarrazin in Quebec City in 1940 and later moved with his family to Montreal.

In 1965, Sarrazin signed with Universal and became one of the last actors to come out of the studio. He went on to land a few roles, including playing a Confederate soldier 1968‘s Journey to Shiloh, opposite Harrison Ford and earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role as a slacker surfer in The Sweet Ride.