News

Dick Pope, the veteran British cinematographer who worked on 11 movies with director Mike Leigh, has died Tuesday, the British Society of Cinematographers said in a statement. He was 77.

No cause of death was given, but Leigh told Indiewire that Pope had undergone “major heart surgery” before work began on Hard Truths, their last collaboration that premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last month.

Pope received Oscar nominations for his work on Leigh’s Mr Turner and the mystery The Illusionist by director Neil Burger. Pope and Leigh also worked together on movies like Life Is Sweet in 1990, Naked, Topsy-Turvey, Vera Drake and Secrets & Lies.

In a 2019 interview with Film Comment, Pope talked about his decades of work with Leigh, with a reference to their movie coming out at the time, Peterloo.

“It’s very difficult to take Peterloo out of all the other work we’ve done together, because...

Dick Pope, the veteran British cinematographer best known for his decades-long collaboration with legendary filmmaker Mike Leigh, has died. He was 77.

The British Society of Cinematographers confirmed the news Tuesday with a statement.

“It is with deepest sadness that we learn of the passing of our friend and colleague Dick Pope Bsc,” the statement read. “Dick had a reputation for being a wonderful collaborator and someone who was passionate about the art form of Cinematography. He was keen to embrace new technologies and ideas while also ensuring the skills and crafts of those that came before him weren’t lost. To this end, Dick would guest tutor at schools such as the National Film and Television School.”

Pope was born in Bromley, Kent in 1947. He began his trade as a documentary filmmaker, working on the British current affairs series World In Action. He moved into television drama in the early...

Baroness Beeban Kidron in a podcast special, from lunch with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to a life-changing documentary.

In a very special episode of Film Stories, Baroness Beeban Kidron joins Simon for a chat about her career, her films, and her move to politics.

They go from her early film Carry Greenham Home, from being one of the first British women to direct a movie with Vroom. Then a big turning point: Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, an acclaimed adaptation of Jeanette Winterson’s book.

The chat covers Kidron’s move to Hollywood, and then the documentary that launched what effectively became her second career…

Baroness Kidron’s website is here: https://beeban.com/

Image: Roger Harris, Cc By 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The post Podcast | in conversation with Baroness Beeban Kidron appeared first on Film Stories.

Clive Owen has never been interested in being comfortable.

From Spike Lee’s Inside Man and Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men to Robert Altman’s Gosford Park and Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick, the actor has worked with a range of filmmakers across an expanse of projects spanning film, television and the stage.

“I like to choose things that scare me a little bit, something that I haven’t done before. When you look at everything I’ve done, it’s a very mixed bag,” says Owen.

When it came to the Mike Nichols film Closer, it was one of the few instances where Owen was willing to retread some known territory. He had starred in the first staging of the Patrick Marber play about the intertwining lives of two couples at the Royal Theater Company and, less than a decade later, he got word that Nichols would like...

John Leguizamo, Patrick Swayze, and Wesley Snipes portrayed three drag queens in the film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everthing! Julie Newmar. The road movie follows the three New York City drag queens as they embark on a journey to Los Angeles to compete in the Miss Drag Queen of America Pageant. While all three lead actors gave praiseworthy performances, Leguizamo found the late Swayze difficult to work with during the film.

Wesley Snipes, John Leguizamo, and Patrick Swayze in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar

Leguizamo revealed that he improvised many of his lines in the film, which didn’t sit well with the Road House star. He also added that he and Wesley Snipes got along so well during the film since they were people of color, but didn’t share the same camaraderie with Swayze.

John Leguizamo Found It Difficult To Work With A ‘Neurotic...

John Leguizamo said during an interview on Andy Cohen’s SiriusXM radio show that it was “difficult” working with Patrick Swayze on their 1995 movie “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.” The cult classic starred Leguizamo, Swayze and Wesley Snipes as three drag queens whose road trip across America to attend a competition in Hollywood is upended when their car breaks down.

“Rest in peace, I love him. He was just neurotic and I’m not … you know, I’m neurotic too but, I don’t know. He was just … it was difficult working with him,” Leguizamo said of Swayze. “Just neurotic, I think maybe a tiny bit insecure. And then Wesley and I, we vibed because we’re people of color and we got each other. And I’m also an improviser, and [Patrick] didn’t like that.”

Leguizamo said that Swayze “couldn’t keep up with” with his...

Film includes interviews with John Waters, Ben Wheatley, Mary Harron.

BFI Distribution has acquired UK-Ireland rights to Scala!!!, a feature documentary about the legendary London cinema which ran from 1978 to 1993, from production company Fifty Foot Woman.

The film will make its world premiere in the ’Documents and Documentaries’ section of the 37th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna in Italy this Sunday, June 25.

The full title of the film is Scala!!! Or, the incredibly strange rise and fall of the world’s wildest cinema and how it influenced a mixed-up generation of weirdos and misfits. Directed by Jane Giles...

Film includes interviews with John Waters, Ben Wheatley, Mary Harron.

BFI Distribution has acquired UK-Ireland rights to Scala!!!, a feature documentary about the legendary London cinema which ran from 1978 to 1993.

The film has its world premiere in the Documents and Documentaries section of the 37th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy this Sunday, June 25. BFI Distribution acquired the film from production company Fifty Foot Woman.

The full title of the film is Scala!!! Or, the incredibly strange rise and fall of the world’s wildest cinema and how it influenced a mixed-up generation of weirdos and misfits. Directed...

Twenty-five years ago, Liz Garbus pulled out her Cover Girl compact at the Oscars just before the winner of best documentary was announced. The Manhattan-raised filmmaker didn’t think her 1998 doc, The Farm: Angola, USA, which she co-directed with Jonathan Stack, would win, but wanted to be prepared. The caked powder spilled all over her gown. “As soon as they did not call us, I thought, ‘Phew, I don’t need to go up there with powder all over my dress,'” she says of the fleeting moment when losing felt like a blessing. “And then being like, ‘Wait, no,'” she recalls of the disappointment settling in.

Netflix vp original documentary features and series Adam Del Deo — then just an aspiring doc producer — kept close track of Garbus’ prolific career after seeing The Farm at the Sundance Film Festival. He was blown away by her deep curiosity and ability...

The BFI London Film Festival’s annual Works-in-Progress showcase, now in its third edition, will present nine new feature films and documentaries by U.K.-based filmmakers.

The showcase, which is part of the festival’s U.K. Talent Days focus, will be an in-person event on Oct. 8 screening extracts from each project introduced by their producer to an invited audience of international buyers and festival programmers. The projects are either in production or post-production. Clips will also be available online via a secure platform to a wider pool of invited international industry professionals.

The annual Buyers & Sellers event returns as an in-person fixture at which international sales agents can meet with U.K. buyers, and Network@Lff will host masterclasses and events for 12 U.K.-based writers, directors and producers to interact with international filmmakers and industry executives at the festival.

Festival director, Tricia Tuttle, said: “Connecting independent filmmakers...

Much has been made about the stunning decision by Warner Bros. Discovery to shelve the 90 million-dollar DC superhero film "Batgirl" ahead of its anticipated debut on HBO Max. As it stands, the newly-minted powers that be at the studio (including CEO David Zaslav) saw fit to use a "purchase accounting" maneuver to write off the movie and not carry the losses in a limited-timeframe tax loophole. While reports on whether the film tested well or not have been mixed, the move stands as a stain on the Warners reputation and will surely put talent off of working with the studio knowing their creative efforts might never see the light of day.

Dumping a film from release permanently is a rare move by major studios, although not unheard of. In 2007 director Beeban Kidron ("Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason") began shooting the British counterculture drama "Hippie Hippie Shake" starring Cillian Murphy...

The film-maker and life peer has been warning of the digital dangers facing young people since 2012. Now, with her Children’s Code, people – and big tech companies - are starting to listen

When she first began talking to her peers in the House of Lords about the rights of children on the internet, Baroness Kidron says she looked like “a naysayer”, like someone who was “trying to talk about wooden toys” or, in her husband’s words, like “one middle-aged woman against Silicon Valley”. It was 2012 and the film-maker and recently appointed life peer was working on her documentary InRealLife, spending “hundreds of hours in the bedrooms of children” to discover how the internet affects young lives. What she saw disturbed her.

“I did what they were doing – gaming, falling in love, watching pornography, going to meet-ups, making music – you name it, it happened,” Beeban Kidron says. The film explored...

Exclusive: UK TV firm Projector Pictures has secured the rights to the trilogy of espionage thrillers written by author and journalist Charlotte Philby, the granddaughter of ‘Cambridge spy’ Kim Philby.

Projector, whose credits include upcoming Channel 5 drama The Holiday and ITV’s Kidnap and Ransom, is developing the trilogy as a returning drama series.

Part Of The Family is Philby’s debut novel and was published by Harper Collins in 2019. It was followed up by A Double Life, with the final installment in the trilogy, The Second Woman, hitting the shelves in July 2021.

The trilogy, which is linked through its themes and characters, is being adapted under the working title A Double Life. Executive producers are Projector Pictures’ Rachel Gesua (The Holiday) and Suzi McIntosh (New Tricks).

In Part Of The Family, protagonist Anna Witherall appears to have the perfect life. Married to her university boyfriend David, she has an enviable job,...

Doc Society will provide resources from its education arm Doc Academy.

UK film education charity Into Film is partnering with non-fiction organisation Doc Society to provide educational resources on documentary film to UK schoolchildren.

They will together curate a programme of free films and resources linked to the school curriculum, made through Doc Society’s non-profit education arm Doc Academy.

The programme includes resources and lessons plans for both in-person and remote learning. They have been created by education professionals, and are based around clips from documentary films that can effectively engage young people in a range of themes and issues.

Doc Society will provide resources from its education arm Doc Academy.

UK film education charity Into Film is partnering with non-fiction organisation Doc Society to provide educational resources on documentary film to UK schoolchildren.

They will together curate a programme of free films and resources linked to the school curriculum, made through Doc Society’s non-profit education arm Doc Academy.

The programme includes resources and lessons plans for both in-person and remote learning. They have been created by education professionals, and are based around clips from documentary films that can effectively engage young people in a range of themes and issues.

In Over & Overs we ask Team Experience to share movies that they've seen countless times and tell us why. Here's Chris Feil...

The 90s were an interesting time to be an odd kid strangely compelled to the sight of men in dresses. Drag comedies had a kind of resurgence into the mainstream, particularly with Robin Williams headlining both Mrs. Doubtfire and The Birdcage to huge popularity. But the one that struck my imagination and sparked an undefined sense of self-identification was Beeban Kidron’s oddly named To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.

The prevalence of female directors is higher in documentary than fiction or animation, study finds.

The share of films made by female directors in Europe is “growing slowly,” reaching 19% in 2017 according to a study.

Overall, only 17% of European feature films were directed by women between 2003 and 2017, with females representing 21% of all directors that made a European film during that time.

In the report on the gender of directors by the European Audiovisual Observatory, 49% of all women directors included in the study had made just one film since 2003.

The study, which considered more than 21,000 European films, also found that the prevalence...

The indie box office got its biggest jolt in quite some time this weekend, as three releases from Toronto had limited rollouts. Leading the way was Focus Features’ “Victoria and Abdul,” which made $152,000 from four screens for the top per screen average of the weekend with $37,933. The period piece stars Judi Dench and Ali Fazal as Queen Victoria and Indian clerk Abdul Karim and explores the pair’s unlikely friendship during the later years of the British monarch’s rule. Stephen Frears directed from a script by Lee Hall, with Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Beeban Kidron and Tracey Seaward producing.

Author: Competitions

On 9th February, Power of Film and Moving Image, a global platform and series of thought-proving discussions, exploring how the power of film and moving image can change the world, will be taking place at the Royal Institute. To celebrate, we have a pair of tickets to give away to 1 winner.

John Gordon (founder of Intelligence Squared, how to: Academy) and Finch & Partners Corporate Creative, the global strategic brand and content agency, are delighted to announce the launch of an international incentive Power Of Film And Moving Image. Designed as a global incentive to enact positive change, Power Of Film And Moving Image will be an annual cultural happening and digital platform to see, expose and explore the ever-growing power and influence of film and moving image to define the modern world and the way we think. Through a series of thought provoking discussions the project will identify...

Focus Features holds worldwide rights to the Working Title drama from Stephen Frears starring Judi Dench in what will be her second on-screen portrayal of Queen Victoria.

Shooting will take place at locations across Scotland, India, and England. Focus is financing Victoria And Abdul in association with BBC Films.

Ali Fazal of Furious 7 plays Abdul Karim, a young clerk who forges a close friendship with the queen that is frowned upon by her inner circle after he travels from India to participate in her Golden Jubilee celebrations.

Dench played Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown (pictured) in 1997.

Billy Elliot screenwriter wrote the Victoria And Abdul script based on Shrabani Basu’s book Victoria & Abdul: The True Story Of The Queen’s Closest Confidant.

The cast includes Adeel Akhtar, Simon Callow, Michael Gambon, Eddie Izzard, Ruth McCabe, Tim Pigott-Smith, Julian Wadham, Olivia Williams and Fenella Woolgar.

Focus will open the film in limited release in North America on September...

It’s been 12 years since we last saw Bridget Jones on screen, and while it’s unclear if world has been crying out for her return, in a testing year, the beleaguered Brits could certainly use a dash of her carefree tomfoolery and sheer adorability. And so Bridge is back – not with a bang, but two in fact, of the variety that leads to a bun in the oven and a brand new dilemma.

In “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” Helen Fielding’s hapless heroine, indelibly played by Renee Zellweger, despaired of being a thirties singleton before literally being fought over by two men. In “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason,” she struggled to maintain what she’d always wanted: A relationship. In this new installment, she is again single, but now 43, and wondering if she has lost her chance to be a mother.

Read More: Trailer Watch: Bridget Has Baby Daddy...

Oscar winner Dame Judi Dench will star as Queen Victoria in the Stephen Frears-directed "Victoria and Abdul" for BBC Films, Focus Features and Universal Pictures.

The true story tale follows an unexpected friendship in the later years of Queen Victoria’s remarkable rule. A young clerk travels from India to participate in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and is surprised to find favor with the Queen herself.

Osccar and Tony winner Lee Hall will pen the screenplay based on Shrabani Basu’s book of the same name. Beeban Kidron, Tracey Seaward, Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner will produce and production is slated to kick off this year for a 2017 release.

Source: BBC Films...

Mrs. Brown

Academy Award winner Judi Dench will star as Queen Victoria and Academy Award nominee Stephen Frears (The Queen) will direct Working Title Films’ Victoria And Abdul, to which Focus Features will hold worldwide rights as part of the company’s renewed global initiative. The movie is slated to go into production this year for a 2017 release. Focus will release the movie domestically and Universal Pictures International will distribute the film around the world. Victoria And Abdul is being co-financed by Focus in association with BBC Films.

The screenplay of Victoria And Abdul is by Lee Hall, an Academy Award nominee and Tony Award winner for Working Title’s Billy Elliot; and is based on Shrabani Basu’s book Victoria & Abdul: The True Story of the Queen’s Closest Confidant.

Victoria And Abdul was developed by Beeban Kidron and Lee Hall at Cross Street Films with BBC Films, and is being produced by Ms.

Working Title Films to make Victoria and Abdul; Focus Features, Universal to distribute.

Nearly 20 years after her Oscar-nominated and BAFTA-winning performance as Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown, Dame Judi Dench is to return to the role for a film directed by Stephen Frears.

Victoria and Abdul will tell the true story of an unexpected friendship in the later years of Queen Victoria’s reign.

Working Title Films will make the film, set to go into production this year for a 2017 release, to which Focus Features will hold worldwide rights.

Focus will release the movie domestically and Universal Pictures International will distribute the film around the world. Victoria and Abdul is being co-financed by Focus in association with BBC Films.

The screenplay is by Lee Hall, an Academy Award nominee and Tony Award winner for Billy Elliot; and is based on Shrabani Basu’s book Victoria & Abdul: The True Story of the Queen’s Closest Confidant.

The feature...

Dame Judi Dench and director Stephen Frears are teaming up for Victoria and Abdul. Working Title is producing in association with BBC Films. Focus Features will co-finance and distribute. The screenplay is by Lee Hall, who previously wrote Working Title's Billy Elliot and is based on Shrabani Basu's book Victoria & Abdul: The True Story of the Queen's Closest Confidant. Victoria and Abdul was developed by Beeban Kidron and Lee Hall at Cross Street Films with BBC Films…...

The Hollywood archives are packed with movies that, for myriad reasons, have somehow slipped between the cracks, never to be heard from again.

No film sums up that unfortunate group more than 1994's The Fantastic Four, a property now getting rebooted for a second time with a lavish budget and inescapable marketing campaign. We look back at seven movies the industry (and the filmmakers behind them) wants to sweep under the carpet.

1. The Fantastic Four

Bernd Eichinger snapped up the film rights to Marvel's first family in the '80s for a pittance, and with the clock ticking down on his ownership he teamed up with B-movie specialist Roger Corman to produce a $1 million picture in less than a month. With a cast of unknowns and music video director Oley Sassone at the helm, The Fantastic Four ended up getting buried by Marvel in a bid for brand protection.

Avi Arad,...

The 1990′s introduced the world to Quentin Tarantino, saw the creation of the Nc-17 rating, and began the slow call toward fully computer animated films. It began the slow (still slow) movement toward a more diverse industry, with the first African-American director earning an Oscar nomination (John Singleton for “Boyz in the Hood”). And the year after one of the greatest years in the history of film, 1995 came plodding along, trying to keep up. So, for the first definitive list of 2015, we are going to look back 20 years at a year that, at first glance, doesn’t look so hot. It’s ripe with flops, but it’s also full of debuts, trailblazing beginnings, and better films than it gets credit for. But, the caveat still stands: this is not a “best of” list. In fact, there are a lot of bad movies on this list. But, they are movies that made a cultural impact,...

€5.5m will be made available for online distribution initiatives.

The EU’s Creative Europe programme is to make €5.5m available for online distribution initiatives for the circulation of European audiovisual works.

A total of €3.65m is to be earmarked for supporting European VOD services over 16 months from Sept 1, 2014 until Dec 31, 2015, which aims “at improving the presence, the visibility and the global audience of European audiovisual works.”

The proposed actions will have to offer a European dimension, which means that the offered content must include audiovisual works from at least five countries participating in the Media sub-programme representing at least five different official languages of the European Union.

Some €500,000 is reserved for a second action line to assemble and deliver “digital packages facilitating the commercialisation of European audiovisual works on VoD services provided in countries where those works are not available”.

The catalogues of “online ready” packages should focus on European audiovisual works with commercial potential. Each title of...

€5.5m will be made available for online distribution initiatives.

The EU’s Creative Europe programme is to make €5.5m available for online distribution initiatives for the circulation of European audiovisual works.

€3.65m is to be earmarked for supporting European VOD services over 16 months from Sept 1, 2014 until Dec 31, 2015, which aims “at improving the presence, the visibility and the global audience of European audiovisual works.”

The proposed actions will have to offer a European dimension, which means that the offered content must include audiovisual works from at least five countries participating in the Media sub-programme representing at least five different official languages of the European Union.

€500,000 is reserved for a second action line to assemble and deliver “digital packages facilitating the commercialisation of European audiovisual works on VoD services provided in countries where those works are not available”.

The catalogues of “online ready” packages should focus on European audiovisual works with commercial potential. Each title of...

Film education charity expands board.

Col Needham, IMDb founder and CEO, and David Kosse, president of Universal International, have joined the board of Into Film.

The recently launched film education charity aims to put film at the heart of children and young people’s learning.

Needham commented: “Having worked with Into Film in the past, I know first-hand what great work they do. I’m delighted to have joined the board of such an inspiring and important organisation.”

“Into Film’s education work is a terrific gateway to understanding the world and a great entry point for the wider business of media and entertainment,” added Kosse.

Led by Chair Eric Fellner, co-chairman of Working Title Films, and Deputy Chair Heather Rabbatts, managing director of Smuggle Entertainment, the founding board also includes film producer Barbara Broccoli and film-making Beeban Kidron.

Broccoli was Chair of First Light and Kidron co-founded Filmclub, the two leading film education charities who came...

Film and Music Entertainment (F&Me) and Dutch producer JaJa Film Productions begin shooting in Rio.

Dutch production company JaJa Film Productions, UK’s Film and Music Entertainment (F&Me) and Rio de Janeiro’s Total Entertainment (as service producer) have kicked off shooting on Streetkids United II - The Girls From Rio.

The film is the follow up to the 2011 Berlinale Official Selection Generation film Streetkids United.

The second film - in what is to become a series - is being shot by F&Me and JaJa Film Productions to coincide with the second Street Child World Cup, organized in Rio by the Amos Trust prior to the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.

“The teams have all arrived in Rio for the opening ceremony,” said F&Me’s Mike Downey. “And our crew has been out filming with the Brazilian girls’ team prior to the arrival of the international crews.

The film will...

On the 30th anniversary of the miners' strike, Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall talks about Thatcher's death, being fired from War Horse – and finding the lead for his Elton John musical

I'm watching Billy Elliot the Musical in a state of shock. Forget the movie – this is incendiary drama, militant to its core. Not only does it open with Labour MP Herbert Morrison's paean to the newly nationalised mines and common ownership ("Now I want you men of the pits to come through ... The great experiment of socialism in a democracy depends on you"), it also pre-empts the passing of Margaret Thatcher with a feelgood singalong: "We all sing together in one breath/ Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher/ We all celebrate today/ 'Cause it's one day closer to your death."

The astonishing thing is that the musical, with tunes provided by the not notably radical Elton John, has been a worldwide success,...

UK-wide programme aims to put film at the heart of children and young people’s learning.

Into Film, a new UK-wide film learning programme, has launched.

Shakespeare comedy Bill, starring the cast of Horrible Histories, has been confirmed as the first film to take part in Into Film’s initiative ‘Green Light to Opening Night’.

The initiative will allow a selection of young people from schools and colleges across the UK to observe and report on different aspects of the film’s life from start to finish. Each area from behind-the-scenes will be turned into a series of video reports and interviews led by, featuring and presented by young people, allowing them to ask the questions they want to ask.

Bill star and writer Laurence Rickard said of the project: “We are tremendously excited to have Into Film reporters on set. We grew up loving film and so to have young people coming on set who also...

"In this documentary the 52-year-old director of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason trawls around the internet, courageously Thinking Of The Children"

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Never in the history of the world have the merchants of obscenity – the teachers of unnatural sex acts – had available to them the modern facilities for disseminating this filth." So says the middle-aged presenter with the stern expression, fighting in vain like a knackered Luddite to hold back the tide of technological advancement. The film is Perversion For Profit, a 1965 propaganda short on the dangers of the modern printing press, but it could just as easily be taken from Beeban Kidron's latest documentary InRealLife, in which the 52-year-old director of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason trawls around the internet, courageously Thinking Of The Children.

Backed by the kind of gloomy, discordant soundtrack that could make Miffy look sinister,...

★★★☆☆ Beeban Kidron's topical documentary InRealLife (2013), newly available on DVD this week, tackles the complexities of the internet from many a disturbing angle. The director exercises her skill as a documentarian, with the many teenagers interviewed in the film candidly revealing their most intimate thoughts to the invisible wall. But as her doc points out, the majority of teenagers are not averse to sharing their private feelings with anyone and everyone online. Kidron's often poetic narrative weaves between the technicalities, cables and clouds to reveal the vulnerable teenagers caught up in the sticky world wide web.

Androulla Vassiliou, the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism, and Youth, has outlined key elements of her agenda for the European audiovisual industry in 2014.

Speaking exclusively to ScreenDaily in Berlin on the eve of this year’s European Film Awards, Vassiliou explained that, following the adoption of the Creative Europe programme, next year will be occupied with its implementation.

“There are several changes compared to the existing programmes and this is why we will be having several information events in all of the member states to inform the stakeholders about the changes and how they can benefit,” she said.

Euro audience study

Audience development, one of Creative Europe’s key areas of focus, will be the subject of a presentation during next month’s Rotterdam International Film Festival.

UK media consultant David Graham of Attentional will be unveiling findings of the “Reaching European Film Audiences” study, ordered by the EC last year to gather “data and knowledge...

Exclusive: The President is one of a record eight features on 2014 production slate from Film & Music Entertainment.

Mike Downey & Sam Taylor’s London-based Film & Music Entertainment is launching a record eight features in 2014, representing total production budgets of $21m. This comes after six features totalling $12m in 2013.

Bac Films has come on board to handle international sales and serve as French co-producer for one of those eight, Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The President, which is casting now for a February start of shoot in Georgia. As with their recent Georgian shoot for Ben Hopkins’ Epic, F&Me are partnering in Georgia with Vladimer Katcharava’s 20 Steps Productions as well as the Caucasian Film Service. Germany’s Herzog and Brümmer co-produces the $1.95m project.

Also in February, sequel documentary Streetkids United II – The Girls from Rio will start its shoot in Brazil, with a budget of $995,000 and directed by Mara Mourao. The Brazilian co-producer is Walkiria Barbosa of Total...

More than 100 prominent people from literature, the arts, science, academia, human rights and the law have signed a declaration urging newspaper and magazine publishers to embrace the royal charter system of press regulation.

They join people who have been victims of press misbehaviour in arguing that charter will give "vital protection to the vulnerable" from abuse of power by the press.

The signatories include broadcasters Stephen Fry, Clare Balding, Gary Lineker and Rory Bremner. Actor Emma Thompson has signed, as have Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir Jonathan Miller.

Several film directors are on the list, such as Stephen Frears, Alan Parker, Mike Leigh, Beeban Kidron, Guy Ritchie, Stephen Daldry, Bill Forsyth, Peter Kosminsky, Terry Gilliam and Michael Apted.

Among the writers and playwrights are Alan Bennett, William Boyd, Alan Ayckbourn, Tom Stoppard, Monica Ali, Helen Fielding, Michael Frayn, Ian McEwan, A C Grayling, David Hare, Alan Hollinghurst, Jk Rowling, Salman Rushdie,...

Documentaries about the effects of the internet on children and a personal account of one of the last remaining dictator states in the world are currently screening at Idfa.

Dogwoof Global has made theatrical sale deals for InRealLife by Beeban Kidron to Canada (Kinosmith) and Australia (Vendetta) and has also sold Dangerous Acts by Madeleine Sackler to Canada (Kinosmith).

Both films are currently in selection at Idfa (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam).

The sales were brokered by Ana Vicente, head of theatrical sales at Dogwoof Global with Robin Smith, president of Kinosmith, and Jill McNab of Vendetta Films.

InRealLife, directed by Beeban Kidron (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason) is a Sky Atlantic / BFI-funded feature and travels from the bedrooms of British teenagers to Silicon Valley, to find out what exactly the internet is doing to our children.

Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus by Madeleine Sackler, produced by Andrea Meditch, is an account...

Actor prizes go to Dame Judi Dench and Jesse Eisenberg; Enough Said, starring the late James Gandolfini, wins audience award.Scroll down for full list of winners

The 7th Abu Dhabi Film Festival handed out its Black Pearl awards at a closing ceremony tonight (Oct 31), including cash prizes amounting to around $700,000.

The Black Pearl for Narrative Feature, worth $100,000, went to A Touch of Sin (Tian zhu ding) directed by Jia Zhangke.

The film, which played in competition at Cannes where it won the best screenplay award, revolves around four threads set in vastly different geographical and social milieus across modern-day China and features random acts of violence.

The Narrative jury, presided over by two-time Oscar nominated actress Jacki Weaver, gave the special jury award ($50,000) to Hiner Saleem’s My Sweet Pepper Land, centred on a law man in a small town on the border of Iran, Iraq and Turkey.

In addition, Dame Judi Dench won best...

Us screenwriter Ellen Fontana knew almost instantly when she first met Emma Booth two weeks ago that the actress is an inspired choice to play one of the main protagonists in the film Shallows.

Booth will play the fiercely independent Queenie in the drama based on the Tim Winton novel which looks at successive generations of a whaling family in Albany, Western Australia, starting in the 1830s.

Queenie gets caught up in the Greenpeace movement which arrived in town in the 1970s, sparking protests which led to the closure of the whaling station.

Fontana is adapting the screenplay, her second involvement with Winton after co-writing with him Cloudstreet,. the miniseries directed by Matt Saville.

.Emma has so many of the qualities, everything I had intuited about Queenie,. Ellen told If on the line from her home in Los Angeles. .She hides nothing; she is a completely authentic person. She.s...

Johnny Depp is to front the first documentary in a new series on Sky Atlantic.

The actor will track the life and career of his hero, artist Ralph Steadman, in For No Good Reason.

Depp is the first of many stars to work on the second Sky Atlantic Documentary Films season, set to air on the channel in 2014.

Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris will also present his own documentary in the series, looking at the role of Donald Rumsfeld as the Us Secretary of Defence and his part in the Iraq War.

Titled The Unknown Known, the film was the first documentary to be nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in September.

The news follows the Sky Atlantic Documentary Film Festival which took place yesterday (October 24) screening six films for the series' first season.

Lucy Walker's The Crash Reel was shown, as well as BAFTA-winning director Beeban Kidron's InRealLife,...

Festival kicks off Thursday with gala screening of Daniel Schechter’s Life of Crime.

Forest Whitaker will be among the guests when the Abu Dhabi Film Festival kicks off Thursday evening. Whitaker will receive the festival’s Black Pearl Career Achievement award.

The festival will open with a gala screening of the Middle East premiere of Life of Crime with director Daniel Schechter and actor Mark Boone Junior both in attendance and participating in an audience Q&A.

Another career achievement award winner will be actress and director Hiam Abbass, who stars in festival world premiere Peace After Marriage.

International guests will include Danis Tanovic, Amma Asante, Jia Zhangke, Beeban Kidron, Emir Baigazin, Agnes B, Cedomir Kolar, Uberto Pasolini, Tao Zhao, Eugene Domingo, Louis Garrel, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Catherine Dussart.

Arab stars set to attend Adff include Mervat Amin, Hend Sabri, Ahmad Ezz, Basel Khayat, Eyad Nassar, Kinda Aloush, Abed Fahad, Manal Khader, Nesrine...

Festival kicks off Thursday with gala screening of Daniel Schechter’s Life of Crime.

Forest Whitaker will be among the guests when the Abu Dhabi Film Festival kicks off Thursday evening. Whitaker will receive the festival’s Black Pearl Career Achievement award.

The festival will open with a gala screening of the Middle East premiere of Life of Crime with director Daniel Schechter and actor Mark Boone Junior both in attendance and participating in an audience Q&A.

Another career achievement award winner will be actress and director Hiam Abbass, who stars in festival world premiere Peace After Marriage.

International guests will include Danis Tanovic, Amma Asante, Jia Zhangke, Beeban Kidron, Emir Baigazin, Agnes B, Cedomir Kolar, Uberto Pasolini, Tao Zhao, Eugene Domingo, Louis Garrel, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Catherine Dussart.

Arab stars set to attend Adff include Mervat Amin, Hend Sabri, Ahmad Ezz, Basel Khayat, Eyad Nassar, Kinda Aloush, Abed Fahad, Manal Khader, Nesrine...

We keep hearing about the trouble with the internet, but the answer can't simply be to switch off our computers – because life online is real life, too

The news I hate the most is the news about how technology is killing us. Killing our libido, killing our friendships, our marriages, killing our children in their beds. I hate news about how social networks are halting our emotional development, how Facebook is quicksand, a swamp of insecurity. How our phones are clean windows into lonely deaths. How they make us worse.

I don't hate this news because it's false, necessarily – I hate it because it makes everybody fear the inevitable, and I hate it because the only answer it offers to these doomsday predictions is to "switch it off". Switch it off and look outside, to the fields, to the Tesco bags hooked on branches, to the sky, grey with promise.

Sky Atlantic is holding a film festival event to coincide with the launch of its new season of documentaries.

The Sky Atlantic Documentary Film Festival - which will take place on Thursday, October 24 - is open to the public and will air all six films from the first season throughout the day, accompanied by masterclasses and panel discussions with the film-makers behind the documentaries.

Documentaries featured include The Crash Reel, a Lucy Walker film focused on champion snowboarder Kevin Pearce, Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry, the story of China's most famous artist, and The Act of Killing, which explores the imaginations of death squad leaders.

Former war correspondent Greg Barker's Man Hunt: The Search for Bin Laden, Beeban Kidron's InRealLife, and James Toback's Seduced and Abandoned starring Alec Baldwin, completes the line-up.

Director of Sky Atlantic Elaine Pyke said: "Sky Atlantic is the home of great storytelling...

Sky Atlantic is holding a film festival event to coincide with the launch of its new season of documentaries.

The Sky Atlantic Documentary Film Festival - which will take place on Thursday, October 24 - is open to the public and will air all six films from the first season throughout the day, accompanied by masterclasses and panel discussions with the film-makers behind the documentaries.

Documentaries featured include The Crash Reel, a Lucy Walker film focused on champion snowboarder Kevin Pearce, Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry, the story of China's most famous artist, and The Act of Killing, which explores the imaginations of death squad leaders.

Former war correspondent Greg Barker's Man Hunt: The Search for Bin Laden, Beeban Kidron's InRealLife, and James Toback's Seduced and Abandoned starring Alec Baldwin, completes the line-up.

Director of Sky Atlantic Elaine Pyke said: "Sky Atlantic is the home of great storytelling...

The full line up has been unveiled for the 7th edition of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.

Daniel Schechter’s Life Of Crime will open the 7th edition of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, which runs Oct 24- Nov 2.

13 Arab feature films (seven of which are world premieres) will compete across different sections of the festival, including Rani Massalha’s Giraffada and Nejib Belkhadi’s Bastardo in the New Horizons Competition, Ahmed Abdallah’s Rags And Tatters and Hicham Ayouch’s Fevers in the Narrative Feature Competition, and Sherief Elkatsha’s Cairo Drive and Mohammad Soueid’s The Boy From Aleppo in the Documentary Feature Competition.

Tobe Hooper’s UAE horror Djin will screen in the festival’s Showcase section.

Films competing in the Narrative Feature Competition include Jun Robles Lana’s Barber’s Tales, Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, Danis Tanovic’s An Episode In The Life Of An Iron Picker, Jasmila Zbanic’s [link...

The full line up has been unveiled for the 7th edition of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.

Daniel Schechter’s Life Of Crime will open the 7th edition of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, which runs Oct 24- Nov 2.

13 Arab feature films (seven of which are world premieres) will compete across different sections of the festival, including Rani Massalha’s Giraffada and Nejib Belkhadi’s Bastardo in the New Horizons Competition, Ahmed Abdallah’s Rags And Tatters and Hicham Ayouch’s Fevers in the Narrative Feature Competition, and Sherief Elkatsha’s Cairo Drive and Mohammad Soueid’s The Boy From Aleppo in the Documentary Feature Competition.

Tobe Hooper’s UAE horror Djin will screen in the festival’s Showcase section.

Films competing in the Narrative Feature Competition include Jun Robles Lana’s Barber’s Tales, Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, Danis Tanovic’s An Episode In The Life Of An Iron Picker, Jasmila Zbanic’s [link...

A documentary exploring the impact of the digital age on young people has something to worry about for everyone

Beeban Kidron's quietly alarming investigation of the bowels of the internet (we open, significantly, in a sewer) moves from the testimony of teens addicted to online porn to a wider examination of information ownership and market-driven manipulation.

While the creeping surveillance narrative is well rehearsed (Julian Assange pops up to do his party piece), Kidron opens up a wide range of debates in which we all need to be involved. It's unsettling viewing, and smartly sidesteps allegations of parental paranoia by talking directly to those "digital natives" whose lives are being transformed (for better and worse) by the web.

Rating: 3/5

DocumentaryInternetDigital BritainPornographyMark Kermode

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