Maravilloso Rubert

Object of Desire

Anim(o)tion

EXIT/INPUT

Novart Media Films will be in charge of production for austrian brothers EXIT/INPUT new music video OBJECT. Executive produced by Bianca Smanio and directed by Sebastian Mantilla, the music video will be released in November 2009 following a live performance by the electronic group in Barcelona. EXIT/INPUT have an endless array of genre’s under there belt. They are out to change the way music is thought of, heard, and seen.

Barcelona Film Project – trailer

I miss you, Kodachrome!

The Eastman Kodak Company announced yesterday that the camera film, immortalised by Simon’s 1973 hit Kodachrome, was being taken off the market after a run of 74 years.

Kodachrome was born in 1935 after a process invented by two musicians, Leopold Godowsky Jr and Leopold Mannes, a violinist and a pianist known as “God and Man” who were passionately interested in photography as a hobby.

The vivid colours of Kodachrome have captured some of the most famous wildlife imagery as well as many of the world’s best-known news photographs.

Abraham Zapruder’s 8mm reel of President John Kennedy’s 1963 assassination was shot on Kodachrome.

Kodachrome had a natural way of recording colour. It was incredibly fine-grained and for many years was the best way of getting maximum quality — the resolution was fantastic.

The top digital cameras would now probably supersede and give better quality when measured mathematically, but aesthetically Kodachrome had something you just can’t reproduce digitally.

Source: Timesonline

Tango Crash

Libertango

Next to Babilonia awarded at the European Independent Film Festival 2009

Over the weekend of 13th-15th March, The European Independent Film Festival 2009 screened 113 films from 27 countries at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Site François-Mitterrand. Alongside the screenings, ÉCU 2009 also offered “Meet the Directors” sessions, an exciting array of workshops with internationally renowned industry experts and the newly launched Perfect Pitch programme. Sebastian Mantilla received Best Director award for his independent film Next to Babilonia.

PUENTES 2009 selects Sebastian Mantilla’s feature film project Canal

For the first time in 2009, EAVE and Buenos Aires Lab will organize a joint workshop for 5 Latin American and 5 European producers with the support of MEDIA International:

The PUENTES Europe-Latin America Producers Workshop taking place in Buenos Aires from March 26-30, 2009 within the framework of the BAFICI (Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente) taking place from March 25 – April 5, 2009.

Tommy Gun Movie Camera

“Very interesting and Rare military Gun outfit delivered for Vietnam War reporter, with case and 5x lenses.”

source: Retro Thing

Bianca Smanio selected at EAVE 2009 with Canal

We are so happy to announce that Novart Media Films producer Bianca Smanio has been selected to take part in the prestigious EAVE 2009 as a participant with the production project: Canal.  Written by Sebastian Mantilla, the project will be developed and monitored by Lise Lense-Møller (Magic Hour Film, Denmark), Peter Rommel (Rommel Film, Germany), Danijel Hocevar (Emotionfilm, Slovenia), Diana Elbaum (Entre Chien et Loup, Belgium).

European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs is a network and project development programme for European and international audiovisual producers.  The annual EAVE Producers Workshop is our flagship programme working with over 50 producers from 28 European countries.  EAVE Plus features the well established Film Finance Forum and the Film Marketing Workshop as well as a range of international programmes.

Past graduates include:

Oscars 2006: The Last King of Scotland by Kevin Macdonald, produced by EAVE 1991 graduate Andrea Calderwood (Slate Films, UK) in the category Best Actor and The Danish Poet by Torill Kove, produced by EAVE 2003 graduate Lise Fearnley (Mikrofilm AS, NO) in the category Best Animated Short Fil.

Venice 2006: Special Jury Prize for Daratt by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, co-produced by EAVE 1994 graduate & group leader Diana Elbaum (Entre Chien et Loup, B)

Cannes 2006: The Wind that Shakes the Barley by Ken Loach, co-produced by EAVE 1991 graduate Ed Guiney (Element Films, IRL)

The headquarters’ team is composed of Alan Fountain (Head of Studies/CEO), Kristina Trapp (Deputy Chief Executive), Patricia Senova (Workshop Manager) and Cécile Devroye (Workshop Co-ordinator).

Kodak brings us a new film

Kodak has unveiled Ektar 100, the world’s finest grain color negative film. It’s a 100 ASA daylight-balanced emulsion that offers excellent enlargement possibilities, although it requires tons of light. The film is rated at a mere 25 ASA under tungsten lighting, so photographers using it for indoor fashion and product photography will feel like they’re back in the days of Kodachrome, slaving under banks of hot bulbs.

The new stock is available only in 35mm format. A decade ago Kodak would have been eager to release Ektar 100 for medium format and sub miniature cameras as well. These days, most professionals are more interested in the immediacy of digital equipment. A technically brilliant new film stock really doesn’t change much. It’s a pity, because Ektar 100 is pushing the limits of chemical image technology – truly a child out of time.

Then came sound, colour, scope, and now… 3D!

There is also no longer any question of whether there will be enough films to fill the new screens. Dreamworks animation announced in March that it would be going 100% 3D. Pixar joined it in April. The next 12 months will see the release of an unprecedented 12 new titles in the Imax format. Watchmen, Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the classic Alan Moore graphic novel, kicks things off in March, with the likes of Transformers II, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and James Cameron’s Avatar following on.

If all those films sound like the sort of fare that you avoid, the digital 3D revolution might still affect you. With DVD sales having fallen for the past few years due to piracy, the industry is looking to cinemas to raise future revenue. And with 3D versions of films accomplishing that feat by attracting larger audiences willing to pay more, where does that leave lower-budget, 2D fare? Could we eventually see two tiers develop, with only blockbuster features making it into cinemas, while independent fare is relegated to the home arena?

If that does happen, it will not be the Imax format that is to blame, since the company is careful not to flood the marketplace by opening too many screens in one area. But the proliferation of standard digital 3D might well lead to a situation where it actually becomes rare for a film released in cinemas to be not shot in the format. A kitchen sink, after all, looks pretty much the same in two or three dimensions, so your typical Mike Leigh movie is not going to be the first thing cinema chains look to when they are programming the new 3D screens.

What’s your view of the 3D revolution? Will it encourage you to head to the cinema more or are you concerned that the type of viewing experience the new technology heralds isn’t going to be your sort of thing at all?

Source: The Guardian

The CIA advice

In 1950, the agency bought the rights to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and then funded the 1954 British animated version of the film. Its involvement had long been rumoured, but only in the past decade have those rumours been substantiated, and the tale of the CIA’s role told in Daniel Leab’s book Orwell Subverted.

The most common way for the CIA to exert influence in Hollywood nowadays is not through anything as direct as funding, or rewriting scripts, but offering to help with matters of verisimilitude. That is done by having serving or former CIA agents acting as advisers on the film, though some might wonder whether there is ever really such a thing a “former agent”. As ex-CIA agent Lindsay Moran, the author of Blowing My Cover, has noted, the CIA often calls on former officers to perform tasks for their old employer.

So, altering scripts, financing films, suppressing the truth – it’s worrying enough. But there are cases where some believe the CIA’s activities in Hollywood have gone further – far enough, in fact, to be the stuff of movies. In June 1997, the screenwriter Gary DeVore was working on the screenplay for his directorial debut. It was to be an action movie set against the backdrop of the US invasion of Panama in 1989, which led to the overthrow of dictator Manuel Noriega. According to his wife, Wendy, DeVore had been talking to an old friend – the CIA’s Chase Brandon – about Noriega’s regime and US counternarcotic programmes in Latin America. Wendy told CNN: “He had been very disturbed over some of the things that he had been finding in his research. He was researching the United States invasion of Panama, because he was setting the actual story that he was writing against this; and the overthrow of Noriega and the enormous amounts of money laundering in the Panamanian banks, also our own government’s money laundering.”

At the end of that month, DeVore had been in Santa Fe, New Mexico, working on another project. He was travelling back to California when, at 1.15am on June 28, he called Wendy, a call she says has been excised from phone records. She told CNN she was “terribly alarmed” because he was speaking as though he were under duress. She was sure “someone was in the car with him”. That was the last time Wendy DeVore heard from her husband.

A year passed, but the case refused to die and speculation mounted. Even the Los Angeles Times began contemplating CIA involvement. DeVore was presumed dead, but there was no body, and no end to the questions. Lo and behold, just nine days after the LA Times reported the case, DeVore’s body was found, decomposing in his Ford Explorer, in 12 feet of water in the California Aqueduct below the Antelope Valley Freeway, south of Palmdale – a city located in “aerospace valley”, so dubbed by locals for its reputation as a US military-industrial-complex stronghold – fuel to the fire for conspiracy theorists.

The coroner went on to declare the cause and manner of DeVore’s death to be “unknown”, but police eventually reached the tentative conclusion that the screenwriter’s death was an accident: he had fallen asleep at the wheel, they said, before careening off the highway and into the water, where he drowned. But loose ends remain: DeVore’s laptop computer containing his unfinished script was missing from his vehicle, as was the gun he customarily carried on long trips; after his disappearance, a CIA representative allegedly showed up at DeVore’s house to request access to his computer; Hollywood private investigator Don Crutchfield noted that previous drafts of DeVore’s script were inexplicably wiped from said computer during the same timeframe; police claimed that DeVore’s vehicle careened off the highway, yet DeVore’s widow was troubled by the absence of visible damage to the guardrail at the scene of the alleged accident; and how come no one noticed an SUV sitting in the water beneath a busy highway for a whole year? Perhaps the whole incident is too like a conspiracy movie to be a real conspiracy – but many remain troubled by De Vore’s death.

Despite the CIA’s professed desire to be more open about the role it plays in Holly-wood, it’s hard to take its newfound transparency too seriously. After all, what use is a covert agency that does not act covertly, even if some of its activities are public? And if it is still not open about the truth of events decades ago, many of which have spilled into the public domain accidently, how can we be sure it is telling the truth about its activities now? The spy may have come in from the cold, but he still finds shelter in the dark of the cinema.

Source: The Guardian

Obama Beach!

Barack Obama sometimes gets ribbed for his outsized ideas, like the massive stage built in Denver, Colorado, to accept the Democratic presidential nomination. But an artist in Barcelona, Spain, has outdone even the candidate himself.

The artist has created a gigantic face of Obama sculpted from gravel and sand, covering nearly 2.5 acres (1 hectare) of Barcelona beachfront before the U.S. elections.

“The size of the piece is intrinsic to its value,” the artist, Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada, said.

“Obama’s personality — his youth, personal history and message of a new politics — has fused with the historical moment to create someone larger than life,” says the artist’s dossier about the work, titled “Expectation.”

Dalsa’s dream fades to black

The Canadian company Dalsa is getting out of the business of making digital cameras for cinematographers. “The Origin camera, launched in 2004, won many accolades but may have been ahead of its time, as it was never used to film the entirety of a major studio’s feature-length film,” writes Matt Walcoff in The Record, adding that the Origin “was used to film advertisements and short films, as well as a skydiving scene in the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace.“

If a letter of intent turns into a final agreement, it will instead license its camera technology to German camera maker Arnold & Richter Cine Technik GmbH (ARRI), which will use the technology in its own products.

Source: Cinematech

Berlusconi sells “Hollywood on Tiber”

It was founded by Benito Mussolini to promote Italian culture and over the years has played host to Ben Hur, Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York and many of Federico Fellini’s best-known films. Now Rome’s famous Cinecitta studios is to enter a new era after the Italian government confirmed it is to sell its final stake in the complex, meaning it will be entirely under private control for the first time.

Cinecitta was set up by the Italian dictator in 1937 and was bombed by the allies during the second world war. Its 22 soundstages, including the legendary Studio 5 where Fellini worked, cover more than 2.1m square feet.

In the 1950s Cinecitta was briefly nicknamed “Hollywood on Tiber” after playing host to a number of large-scale US productions, including Ben Hur and Quo Vadis. More recent productions include Spike Lee’s Miracle at St Anna and Abel Ferrara’s Go Go Tales.

The privatisation process began in the 1980s after the studios came close to bankruptcy, but Silvio Berlusconi’s government is now selling off its final 24% stake – with offers from outside Italy welcome – in a move which does not come as a surprise. Berlusconi’s administration has taken a rather dim view of film-oriented spending since returning to power in May. The Rome film festival, which was founded only in 2006, has been threatened with budget cuts by the Berlusconi-backed Gianni Alemanno, the city’s new mayor and former neo-fascist youth leader. His campaign’s print ads carried the slogan, “Alemanno, for less cinema and more security” – a reference to his central plank of fighting illegal immigration and cutting down the festival’s costs.

source: The Guardian

Spiritual vision

Cinema lost another gifted voice when Japanese filmmaker Jun Ichikawa, director of award-winner, Tony Takitani, among others, died after collapsing at lunch on Friday, Sept. 19. He was 59. “No assessment of Ichikawa’s work can ignore the influence of Yasujiro Ozu, whom the younger director idolised,” writes Ronald Bergan in the Guardian. “What Ichikawa shared with Ozu was the intimate scale, understated humanism, economy of shot composition, low camera placement, deliberate pace – and the dominance of the family as a theme.”

“There’s no point trying to copy Ozu’s methods. But what I wanted to learn from him was the spirit of a movie director – protect what we believe, and to stick to what we want to speak about.” Jun Ichikawa

Variety has additional details, here.

Infernal indie spirit

Most studio films are enormous nets, designed to scoop up the largest possible global audience. The specialty divisions, in turn, aim for niche audiences with more talk, less action (thanks to Quentin Tarantino, sometimes both); would-be auteurs or the real deal; and as many talking points as the Democratic National Convention (racism and sexism bad, multiculturalism good).

Most of these niche films are nice, polite films of the sort you hear about on National Public Radio in between sob stories and pledge drives. Some are indelible works of art. Most are disposable, and many look, sound and play out, beat for beat, like Hollywood movies with lower budgets.

Their provocations are superficial, tiny jabs against putative political correctness, like those of the pregnant teenager in “Juno.” These are not films that will ever create a new wave; they barely make a ripple, and intentionally so, since each ripple might threaten possible revenue. Better to make audiences smile than make them squirm, better to reassure them than shake them up, better to stay safe than say, “Sorry, Mr. Murdoch.”

Lance Hammer’s “Ballast,” an elegiac, rapturously lovely story set in the Mississippi Delta and featuring a cast of unknown black actors, would have been news in any year, but it means more now because it’s another reminder that independent filmmaking means more than signing with Fox Searchlight. And, indeed, of these four films I just mentioned — all idiosyncratic, intensely personal, stylistically venturesome, nonformulaic — only “Sugar” will be released by a studio division, Sony Pictures Classics. “Momma’s Man” is being released by tiny Kino International and “Wendy and Lucy” will reach theaters later this year courtesy of a newcomer, Oscilloscope Pictures. Mr. Hammer originally signed on with IFC Films, but, believing he could improve profits without a middleman, especially in today’s overcrowded market, has decided to release his movie by himself.

Source: NY Times / MANOHLA DARGIS

The name of the game

It’s hard to imagine a more successful opening night of a major film festival than last year’s Venice bow of Joe Wright’s “Atonement.”It cost Universal $1 million for the privilege of launching “Atonement” at Venice, and the studio was clearly happy enough with the outcome to take “Burn After Reading” there this year. But not everyone is convinced it was worth the money. Would “Atonement,” or fellow Oscar nominee “Michael Clayton,” which also premiered at Venice last year — or, for that matter, “No Country for Old Men,” which Miramax and Paramount Vantage took to Cannes — really have suffered a lower trajectory, both commercially and in kudos season, if they had been launched more modestly?

After all, Paul Thomas Anderson premiered “There Will Be Blood” at Fantastic Fest in Austin, while “Juno” bowed equally discreetly at Telluride, and both of those films nabbed best picture Oscar noms alongside “Atonement.” On the other hand, “Juno” made clever use of Europe’s less-expensive fests, traveling to Rome, London, Stockholm, Thessaloniki, Gijon and Rotterdam, raising its profile territory by territory. There’s nothing the artistic directors of A-list festivals like better than a glossy, classy movie by a big-name auteur, laden with Hollywood stars and bankrolled by a studio willing to pay for a splashy party. But these are frugal times.

With the shuttering or downsizing of Warner Independent, Picturehouse, New Line and Paramount Vantage, the travails of indies such as the Weinstein Co., Sidney Kimmel and David Bergstein’s Capitol/ThinkFilm group, and the drying up of private equity investment, it’s clear that the U.S. majors are no longer so willing to foot the bill for expensive art movies, even if they do win awards. And that could leave the red carpets of major film festivals looking decidedly threadbare.

Venice is particularly vulnerable because of its exorbitant cost and its date proximity to Toronto and Rome. Aside from Universal, Sony, with “Rachel Getting Married,” is the only other studio on the Lido this year — guaranteeing that Anne Hathaway will be the belle of the ball.

“It’s expensive and a little difficult to manage, but we still think there’s good value for the right film at Venice,” says Sal Ladestro, exec VP of marketing for Sony Pictures Releasing Intl. “We took ‘Sleuth’ there last year, and it performed incredibly well in Italy, France and Spain, and I think the Venice launch had a lot to do with that. There’s nothing like a red-carpet event in Venice if you’ve got the right stars, but if you don’t, it can be difficult.” In fact, Italy was the No. 1 territory for “Sleuth” anywhere in the world — but that’s not saying much. On the other hand, “Atonement” fell flat as a pancake in Italy, such is the mercurial impact of a splashy Venice bow.

As one studio exec confides, “Venice doesn’t even help much to launch our films in Italy, let alone anywhere else.” Take the latest Keira costumer, “The Duchess,” backed by Pathe and Par Vantage. Pic was widely expected to show up on the Lido, but instead Pathe has opted for a world premiere in London Sept. 3, followed four days later by a North American bow at Toronto and a trip to the Rome fest in October.

According to Pathe topper Francois Ivernel, “Our Italian distributor, BIM, was willing to have the film in Rome over Venice mainly for timing issues (better time to release the film in October in Italy) and secondarily for costs consideration.”

“Venice is ferociously expensive,” says PR maven Jonathan Rutter. “That’s a factor for a lot of distributors and sales companies. Acquisitions people go more to Toronto, where there are more sidebars and product. What you manage to accomplish at Cannes, and to a lesser extent at Venice, is a great junket, but in Venice the hotels are obscenely expensive and not very good, it costs a fortune to rent interview space, and the service is appalling. Then you’ve got the cost of boats, because all the really big stars want to stay at the Cipriani.”

Increasingly, then, pragmatism rather than prestige is the name of the game when distribs figure their festival strategies. It’s no longer about the cachet of getting your film chosen for a Cannes or a Venice, but a cold calculation as to whether the festival works as a cost-effective launchpad for the release.

Source: Variety

New Frontiers, D.I.Y.

The established distributors have regular circuits in which they play their films, media outlets through which they advertise and audiences they court religiously. A self-distributed movie like “Ballast,” which is cast with African-American nonactors and is about down-and-out characters (and opens at Film Forum in October), is compelling its champions to think outside the art-house box and explore new frontiers and demographics, like black churches and Southern audiences. (The movie, which won cinematography and directing prizes at this year’s Sundance festival, had a tentative deal with IFC Films before the director Lance Hammer decided to release the film through his own Alluvial Film Company.)

“At one time distributors were paying so much money they could do anything they wanted, maybe consult respectfully with the filmmakers but essentially do what they wanted,” said Steven Raphael, a consultant on the movie. “But now there’s no money and filmmakers get resentful, so they’re taking back control.”

Neil Mandt, the director, producer and star of “Last Stop for Paul,” a comedy about two men traveling around the world sprinkling the ashes of their dead friend, had a prospective deal with Magnolia Pictures. But the distributor was interested only in a DVD release. Mr. Mandt passed.

“I will be the first to admit that I never imagined that the movie would connect as well as it did when it won a prize at 45 festivals,” Mr. Mandt said. “That’s a crazy number. Despite that, we never were approached by another company for a domestic distribution deal again.”

“Last Stop for Paul” opens next week in New York, and Mr. Mandt hopes a successful opening will lead to a larger rollout. “If all of this goes as planned,” he said, “maybe in another year we will make our money back.”

Source: NYTimes

Deutsch Bank is out of film business!

Money makes the world go round and right now Hollywood is all about following the money.

Once upon a time the studios financed their own movies, and gradually as production and marketing costs kept rising, began looking for partners and financing to help them reduce risk.

While Paramount spun the news yesterday that they walked away from a $450-million Deutsche Bank slate financing deal, which would have funded 25 % of each film’s budget capped at $30 million per picture, the chill was felt around Hollywood.

What impact would this have on the elusive Ryan Kavanaugh of Relativity Media, who has also gotten funding from Deutsche Bank, which was withdrawing from the film business? Kavanaugh co-finances big-budget movies all over town, and also has his own deal to produce movies for MGM release.

No one should be surprised that banks are starting to demand tougher terms on these deals, which tended to favor the studios. Bigger forces are at work: money is drying up. And debt is more expensive. “At the end of the day, someone has to pay,” said one company chief.

The credit crunch will only put more pressure on studios like Paramount to be more risk averse (like morphing Vantage into a more genre-oriented label). “You’ll see more big budget sequels and remakes,” says one observer.

Meanwhile the Weinsteins are shuffling their deck chairs to stay ahead of the financial curve: they just announced a showy Showtime pay-TV deal for which they must deliver 95 movies. The question is, did they pay upfront to get that deal? Yes, they put down some sort of guarantee that they would deliver all the pics, but nothing anywhere near the fantastic $100-million figure that has been reported. I’m hearing it was way less than half that figure. The Weinsteins needed the Showtime deal in order to seal the additional financing they need. Locking in a pay deal was essential to going forward. When they extricate themselves from MGM distribution at year’s end, they might really be in business.

Source: Variety

Weinstein on fire!

The recording is of a Dec. 12, 1996, phone call between Harvey and Joe Roth, then president of Walt Disney Studios, in which the two complain about the $138 million severance deal that Mike Ovitz negotiated to leave Disney after 16 months.

“Please fire me,” Weinstein facetiously tells Roth. “I’ll split whatever I get . . . I’ll meet you in St. Barts. We’ll buy both halves of the island . . . If you don’t fire me, then I think we should make bad movies next year. Let’s make a series of [bleep]y movies.”

Roth replies: “I obviously made a mistake. I made good movies.” Harvey says, “Joe, you are a success, so therefore you are a failure in this town.” The two then name Peter Guber, Michael Fuchs and Jon Peters as having won huge golden parachutes.

“Everybody got wealthy on failure,” Weinstein says. Roth replies: “You know what the problem is with you and me? We care about the movies.” Weinstein laughs: “We have character flaws that must be overcome.”

Listen to the podcast here

Indie Film Crisis II

The independent film world will face a great crisis from a simple, yet confounding, paradox of human life: you cannot sell a movie if you already have an audience.

The real problem with new media that no one seems to be detecting yet is the democratic process itself. For all the complaining some do about Hollywood spoon-feeding us crap, democracy as a business model is far worse. Leaving aside the nightmare of actually finding a decent independent movie in the sea of amateur waste floating on social networking sites, consider for a moment that you’re an independent filmmaker with some real chops. Let’s also imagine that you’re stuck, like so many others, and have no possible route to selling your film after studios and distributors stop buying unknowns at festivals.

According to the Youtube model, you throw your masterpiece up there to the gaping maw of the public. If buzz never catches on, if there’s no tipping point, you’re in trouble. But it’s far worse if you actually do get a million viewers in one week. Because, congratulations, your film isn’t marketable anymore. While creating a massive audience for a film, new media simultaneously reduces the sales potential of a movie

How many of those million will head to the theaters to see a movie on the big screen that they’ve already seen? How many who felt compelled to write “Gr8 job, dood!!” on your profile page will still feel compelled to spend money for the mega-plex release a year later?

Even if the film is good enough to drive some to see it again, a significant percentage of viewers will stay at home browsing for their next free entertainment fix. Thus, having the most popular film up on Youtube also ensures its death. Plus, if a payment structure isn’t created, no one will want to spend $20,000 on a movie that’s given away for free – effectively killing the chances of anything good cropping up anway. Also plus, entire genres like Thrillers, Mysteries and other single-viewing films will have no chance of breaking away from the computer monitor and onto the big screen. Clearly, letting the people decide what’s good is not good. At least for movie makers.

Source: FilmSchoolRejects

Bright Red

The professional video world is excited about the development of the RED Camera – a film resolution digital video camera. Lots of mystery surrounds the device, even after prototypes were unveiled. My disappointment? The actual camera isn’t red.

There are lots of practical reasons to not have a bright red video camera (think of all the charging bulls it might attract!), but that doesn’t mean that your editing equipment can’t be! Let’s look back some 50 years to Kalart’s 8mm film editor – in bright red plastic! This is pretty daring – remember that photo equipment was almost always in serious gun-metal finishes, or dour black. What a great way to perk up the drudgery of editing your home movies!

The box promises that through editing you can transform your own films into polished “movieland” type productions with this simple device. The Kalart even goes so far as to simplify advancing and rewinding the film by just using one crank. Using a complicated internal mechanism, you use a single crank to move the film forwards and backwards. To be honest, I find the single crank thing more confusing than anything – and the gimmickry that makes it work isn’t always the most reliable.

So while the rest of the world waits for the RED camera to hit in a big way, I hope that some enterprising manufacturers of editing equipment are standing by with the red paint.

Source: Retro Thing

High Heels Monopoly

Paul Julian Smith is one of the greatest scholars of Pedro Almodovar in the UK with many academic publications and press about his films in various magazines and generalists. Smith ignited the fuse of controversy last tuesday with an article published in The Guardian entitled The Curse of Almodovar. In the article, PJS writes that “a super name” (like Almodovar) can capture the interest of the national film industry and “monopolize international interest.”

Source: El Pais

Indie Film Crisis

Mark Gill of The Film Department, ex-of Warner Independent and Miramax, is one of those film execs journalists like to call because he’s articulate, witty, observant, and actually has an overview of the business. He put all this to good use in his keynote speech, “Yes, the Sky Really is Falling,” Saturday for the LAFF film financing conference. It’s all here if you want to plow through it; he’s on the mark.

Unfortunately, most of the folks trying to make indie movies these days, as was revealed at my film financing panel Saturday (including producer Cathy Schulman, ICM’s Hal Sadoff and New Bridge Capital’s Danny Mandel), seem to be trying to make genre thrillers with someone on the list of not-too-costly actors between the age of 20 and 30 who foreign sales agents want to sell in territories around the world (where interest in American product seems to be drying up). Quality dramas are a no-go, said Schulman, although that’s what she’s trying to make at Mandalay Indie. And the surviving specialty distribs are strictly cherry-picking. You might get your movie made. But it might go straight-to-video. And it wouldn’t be worth as much as it might have been a few years ago.

source: Thompson on Hollywood (Variety)

Hollywood & FBI

Si uno piensa en la industria cinematográfica, uno sabe que cuando sale a rodar, no tiene mucho tiempo. Si quiere cortar el tráfico de una ciudad, ¿podría la industria estar sujeta a normas de soborno y corrupción que podría correr en algunas cuestiones? Apostemos pues…

El FBI corre detrás de Hollywood, cuando este, al parecer se entromete hasta en los festivales de cine, hasta casi un millón de dólares se han llegado a desembolsar para controlar la selección de un festival… En cuanto a los rodajes, si no fuera por esa desfachatez, ¿a quién se le ocurriría salir del país para ir a rodar en Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Angola, Indonesia, Rusia, Uzbekistan o Marruecos?… A nadie. El problema es que pocos entienden la necesidad de las Film Comissions locales. Al final, por muy rabiosas que parezcan estas instituciones (controladas por el Estado), todo sale mucho más barato. Os dejo con un artículo muy interesante recogido en Portfolio.com (en inglés).

Barcelona Film Project 2008

Novart Media Films will produce the Barcelona Film Project, with Diogo Costa Amarante, Andres Duque and Raya Martin directing.

More information here

La nueva era del Super8

Todo el mundo habla de la RED ONE, del 4k y de Obama, dedico este post para hablar de algo original y novedoso:

La historia de la nueva CINEVIA profesional está fuertemente conectada con la historia de un hombre: Klose Gottfired de GK Film GmbH, Bielefeld, Alemania. Un hombre que dedica toda su energía y pensamiento para alcanzar su gran objetivo: añadir nuevas perspectivas para la cinematografía moderna en la producción de materiales de la mejor calidad posible. Todo comenzó en Waghäusel en el otoño de 2004, cuando nació la idea de mantener el formato de Super 8 vivo mediante la introducción de un segundo cartucho de Super 8 con la misma calidad que la Kodak 40 K en el mercado.

Después de probar todos los materiales de película, Klose decidió utilizar el Fuji – Velvia ASA DIN luz del día 50/18 reversible con proceso E6.
Durante las siguientes semanas y meses las conexiones, contactos y los nombramientos se hicieron. El material se procesó para la Super 8 de GK-Film con la ayuda de Frank Bruinsma’s Super 8 Reversal Laboratory en Rotterdam. Ellos cargaron cartuchos y de inmediato comenzaron los ensayos, los disparos y el desarrollo. Los resultados fueron sorprendentes en relación a los límites de grano fino, la nitidez y el color de la prestación. Una maravilla a explotar!

Bianca Smanio seleccionada con “Canal” en el prestigioso programa Film Business School 2008

The Film Business School is a well-established workshop for feature film producers and executives at the early stages of their career who need just that advice, those contacts, and the correct information. The list of prospering film producers from Europe who have graduated from the FBS is testament to its calibre and includes Oscar winners and many other commercially successful players.

Sigur Ros visto por Christopher Doyle en “Goobledigook”

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Ingeniosa promoción de Kill Bill en Auckland

Hannah Collins en La Caixa

Las fotografías panorámicas y las proyecciones multipantalla de Hannah Collins son de las más grandes que se pueden encontrar en el arte contemporáneo. En la muestra Hannah Collins. Historia en curso, el CaixaForum expone una selección de estas obras.

Entre las proyecciones multipantalla destaca el encargo para esta exposición La Mina, historia en curso, en la que la artista busca las conexiones entre los individuos y los grupos sociales. Además, la exposición, que presenta una veintena de imágenes panorámicas, preestrena Dibujante sobre la ciudad, un proyecto artístico sobre el paisaje cambiante de la Barcelona metropolitana.

Cannes-sados de tanta obra maestra!

Sebastian Mantilla seleccionado en Torino Film Lab con Canal

El pasado día 16 de mayo, Savina Neirotti de Torino Film Lab ha presentado en el Festival de Cannes el nuevo fondo para primeras y segundas películas dotado de un million de euros. Torino Film Lab apoya a nuevos talentos de todo el mundo, asesorando en la formación, desarrollo y financiación de los proyectos. Cada año Torino Film Lab con la colaboración del programa Media y de Script&Pitch workshops seleccionan 20 proyectos. Entre ellos destaca el largometraje “Canal” del director español Sebastian Mantilla.

Los proyectos en fase avanzada de producción recibirán un premio otorgado por un jurado compuesto por Alicia Weston (Sundance/NHK), Alberto Barbera (director del Museo del Cine de Torino), Ido Abram (director de Cinemart, Rotterdam), Violeta Bava (Festival de Buenos Aires), Steve Della Casa (crítico de cine) y Mathieu Darras (Semana de la Crítica, Cannes) que será entregado en el próximo Festival de Cine de Torino

Premio Filmotech para The Captain de Sebastian Mantilla

En una iniciativa pionera, los organizadores de DOCUMENTA 08 y los responsables de EGEDA Digital han decidido crear el premio Filmotech.com, a través del cual el Festival cobrará vida en la Red más allá de su página oficial.

La fotografía de Gökhan Tiryaki en Three Monkeys de Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Matyas Erdely’s Ektachrome reversal 16mm film test with Amaia Arzua for Next to Babilonia

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Shot with ARRI SR3 during the summer of 2006 by Matyas Erdely with Amaia Arzua at Service Vision headquarters in Barcelona. The reversal stock was bought in New York’s Film Emporium for Sebastian Mantilla’s Iraq set film Next to Babilonia. High contrast, big grain, saturated colors with Ektachrome 7285 color reversal 100D daylight film. We personally want to congratulate Matyas Erdely’s impressive photography in Cannes officially selected hungarian film DELTA.

Albert Serra busca el cuarto Rey Mago en Cannes

Albert Serra vuelve a Cannes con su segunda película reinterpretando la figura de los Reyes Magos. Y es que en El Cant dels Ocells, que se rodó en Tenerife, Fuerteventura e Islandia, presenta el viaje de cuatro y no tres Reyes en busca del Salvador para adorarlo. En su camino estas figuras míticas mostrarán sus facetas más íntimas y cotidianas. La película está protagonizada por Lluís Serrat Batlle, Lluís Carbó y Lluís Serrat Masanellas. La producción corre a cargo de Eddie Saeta y Andergraund.