By Maggie Overfelt, CNNMoney.com contributing writer
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The news this week that Blockbuster Video has hired advisors to explore "restructuring" options, which analysts say could include a bankruptcy filing, is bittersweet to the movie rental business's remaining indie stores.
They're likely to outlive the corporate Goliath that once crushed scores of smaller retailers beneath its blue-and-yellow onslaught of identical chain stores. But the same forces that seem to have doomed Blockbuster (BBI, Fortune 500) - mail-order DVDs and streaming online video - may kill off the entire industry.
John Koch, the founder of Cinema Revolution in Minneapolis, is fighting on all fronts to keep his business going. Sales started softening in the middle of last year, when high gas prices kept people from making the drive out to his store. To compensate, he moved to a new location in Minneapolis, with a higher rent but also a more diverse and artistic community. Koch hopes his new neighbors will better appreciate his selection of foreign and cult films; he also provides a haven for local filmmakers who need a venue to screen their movies.
Read the article at cnn.money.
New York, NY - March 12, 2009 - Lorber HT Digital has acquired the U.S. theatrical rights and public performance rights to the acclaimed documentary NOLLYWOOD BABYLON, co-directed by Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal, on the heels of the film's U.S. premiere at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival as part of the World Cinema Documentary Competition. The deal was negotiated by Christina Rogers for the National Film Board and by Richard Lorber and Elizabeth Sheldon for Lorber HT Digital.
Lorber HT Digital will open NOLLYWOOD BABYLON theatrically at select venues in the second quarter of this year, and will also make it available to educational and cultural institutions. After the initial theatrical release, Lorber HT Digital will release the DVD to the consumer market on its Alive Mind label later in 2009.
Industry pioneer Richard Lorber, founder of Lorber HT Digital, comments on the acquisition, "NOLLYWOOD BABYLON celebrates the power of film to transform a culture and an industry. The explosion of Nigerian cinema over the last two decades is the reclaiming of African story-telling and culture by and for Africans. Nigeria is the new cultural center of Africa and Nollywood is the epicenter."
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times calls the film, "...an irresistible treatise on the Nigerian film industry..."
About The Film
NOLLYWOOD BABYLON chronicles the wild world of "Nollywood," a term coined in the early ‘90s to describe the world's fastest-growing national cinema, surpassed only by its Indian counterpart. The film delves first-hand into Nigeria's explosive homegrown movie industry, where Jesus and voodoo vie for screen time. Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen, known in Lagos as "Da Governor," is one of the most influential men in Nollywood. Undeterred by miniscule budgets, Da Governor is one of a cadre of resourceful filmmakers creating a garish, imaginative, and wildly popular form of B-movie that has frenzied fans begging for more. Among the bustling stalls of Lagos's Idumato market, films are sold, and budding stars are born. Creating stories that explore the growing battle between traditional mysticism and modern culture, good versus evil, witchcraft and Christianity, Nollywood auteurs have mastered a down-and-dirty, straight-to-video production formula that has become the industry standard in a country plagued by poverty. This burgeoning Nigerian film industry is tapping a national identity where proud Africans are telling their own stories to a public hungry to see their lives on screen. Peppered with outrageously juicy movie clips and buoyed by a rousing score fusing Afropop and traditional sounds, NOLLYWOOD BABYLON celebrates the distinctive power of Nigerian cinema as it marvels in the magic of movies.
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U.S. press missed a lot in Gaza according to the article in SF Chronicle:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visits Israel and the West Bank this week, giving the U.S. media another opportunity to tell the story of the 22-day war between the Israeli military and Hamas in Gaza in December and January. To San Francisco-based Middle Eastern media watcher Jalal Ghazi and other analysts, few Americans saw as many of the devastating images from Gaza as the rest of the world did.
Ghazi did. He is an associate producer for "Mosaic," a Peabody Award-winning daily aggregation of Middle Eastern news programs produced by San Francisco's Link TV. "Mosaic" culls broadcasts from 36 stations in 22 countries in the region.
Related: Alive Mind Acquires U.S. Rights to Palestinian-Israeli Hit Comedy Series «Arab Labor»
Theater of War is now available for Download to Own to screen in HD
Streep and Kevin Kline featured in documentary on the Tony Kushner-adapted Brecht masterwork
New York, NY – March 4, 2009 – Richard Lorber’s documentary label Alive Mind has acquired the U.S. theatrical, public performance and home video rights to the acclaimed documentary THEATER OF WAR, directed by John Walter (How to Draw a Bunny – Winner, Special Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival). Featuring Meryl Streep as the unforgettable Mother Courage, this 2008 documentary was based on the New York Shakespeare Festival production of Bertolt Brecht’s "Mother Courage and Her Children” in Central Park. THEATER OF WAR displays yet another facet to the brilliance of Streep, recently honored at the Oscars where she was cited for an unprecedented 15 nominations and two wins. The deal was negotiated by Sheri Levine and Michael Thornton of Forward Entertainment, Jack Turner of White Buffalo productions, and by Richard Lorber and Elizabeth Sheldon of Lorber HT Digital, for release under its Alive Mind banner.
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Another coup for Lorber HT Digital, who acquired North American theatrical and home video rights for the 2008 New York Film Festival winner, Tony Manero. Set in Chile during the grim days of the military dictatorship of General Pinochet, the film opens with the seemingly benign protagonist, Raul, protecting a little old lady from neighborhood thugs (where are the ubiquitous Chilean police when you need them?). Any sympathy is quickly shattered when Raul bashes her brains out with his bare hands and then absconds with her color television set, although not before taking care to feed her cat.
A macabre political parable, Raul's obsession with Saturday Night Fever is an apt metaphor for the dictatorship. The film's use of violence and sexual disfunction is appropriate and powerful. Raul's fantasy, and his single-minded pursuit of it, paints a dark picture of life under a dictator.
Read more at Indiewire.
1 comment ( 407 views )I saw a preview of the film and found it very provocative (yes, it got away from me). Having taken a seminar with Professor Zizek (anybody who registered was guaranteed an 'A'), it is nice to see that there is still an audience for an Eastern European Lacanian Marxist. The seminar was packed and he was revered like a rock star. The article below is by Andrew O'Hehir at Salon.com
Astra Taylor knows she's a little over her head in the whimsical, earnest series of conversations with philosophers that makes up her film "Examined Life." But the young filmmaker uses that fact to disarm us, putting herself clumsily into the frame during a stroll in New York's Washington Square Park with inscrutable post-Heideggerian feminist philosopher Avital Ronell, who declares that she would like to interview Taylor, rather than the other way around.
As the scene continues, Taylor apologizes for the shallowness of trying to present an introduction to several important contemporary philosophers in an 85-minute feature film. Rather preeningly, Ronell quips that it's fine that the other philosophers in the film are restricted to 10 minutes each, but she should not be subjected to such an indignity, and then launches into an extended monologue about the healthy uses of anxiety and meaningless in the postmodern world. It's good to feel bad, more or less. OK, she doesn't actually say "postmodern," but she might as well. Meanwhile, Taylor's camera wanders around the park, capturing the book-readers and iPod-listeners and park-bench smoochers and frolicking dogs in the middle distance while Ronell keeps talking. One of these people has just been made to look like an ass, and it isn't Taylor.
Read more at Salon.com
Lots of sepculation in the industry regarding the fate of New Yorker Films, an icon in the art distribution world. By Andrew O'Hoheir at Salon.com
New Yorker Films
An icon of independent cinema crumbled before the nation's widening financial crisis on Monday, as New Yorker Films, owner of an unparalleled library of art-house films from all over the world, announced it was closing up shop after nearly 44 years. While the company had evidently been in distress for some time -- it had sharply downscaled its theatrical operations, and its DVD releases were frequently delayed -- the announcement still sent shock waves through the independent film world.
New Yorker was founded in 1965 by moviehouse proprietor Dan Talbot, who continued to run it, in partnership with co-president José Lopez, until the closing was announced Monday. In case you're wondering, it has no connection with the New Yorker magazine, owned by Condé Nast. Talbot named the film company after the repertory cinema he then operated on Manhattan's Upper West Side. (While that theater is long gone, Talbot still owns a majority share of the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, another Upper West Side institution, which is unaffected by New Yorker's closing.)
Read the rest at Salon.com
Lorber Announces Aquisition of U.S. Rights to Palestinian-Israeli Hit Comedy Series «Arab Labor»Controversial satirical series from leading Israeli channel now an international sensation.
New York, NY, February 23, 2009 — Richard Lorber has acquired the U.S. home entertainment rights to the controversial hit Israeli comedy series ARAB LABOR (Avoda Aravit), it was announced today. The deal was negotiated by Keren Shahar for Israeli producing broadcaster Keshet (Channel 2) and by Richard Lorber and Elizabeth Sheldon for Lorber HT Digital. The pact was facilitated by Steven Lawrence for Link TV, the independent television network which premiered the series on U.S. television this past fall to enormous success and media attention. The uniqueness and quality of the series also led to the unprecedented presentation of individual episodes at leading U.S. film festivals. The Los Angeles Times calls the series, “…groundbreaking and amazing,” and the San Francisco Chronicle calls it’s creator, Sayed Kashua, “The Palestinian Seinfeld.” Lorber and Link will partner in marketing and cross-promoting continued U.S. broadcast and DVD and digital download sales of the series.
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New label acquires Ferrera/Maysles Documentary about Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s iconic Central Park work of art.
New York, NY – January 6, 2009 – Alive Mind has acquired all North American rights to Antonio Ferrera and Albert Maysles’ landmark documentary, THE GATES. The acquisition was negotiated by Antonio Ferrera and Patricia Jones (on behalf of Maysles Films, CVJ Corporation, and Ferrera Films) and Richard Lorber and Elizabeth Sheldon on behalf of Lorber HT Digital for release on their new specialty distribution label, Alive Mind.
Alive Mind will open THE GATES theatrically in New York next spring, and it will play select venues around the country throughout 2009. The film will also be immediately available to educational institutions that have been clamoring for it since its gala debut at The Tribeca Film Festival.
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Early in October during MIP COM in tawdry Cannes I caught up with Claire Aguilar, vice president of programming for ITVS over a bowl of truffle ravioli that was all the more delicious due to the weak dollar (oddly enough, I discovered that the frugal food of choice was a dozen oysters from Astoux et Brun with a glass of white wine, reminding me that one hundred years ago in New York oysters were the poor man's food because they were so abundant on the Sound, a briny contrast to their status today as a delicacy, but I digress...)
lTVS, based in San Francisco, is a CPB and foundation backed fund for independent producers that is open to both Americans and international producers, first time directors and producers as well as Tefflon industry veterans. ITVS green lights 40 projects a year that can be submitted either to the International Call, for funds up to $150,000 or Open Call, with budgets of up to $350,000. ITVS also commissions and acquires approximately 50 hours per year. At the moment, ITVS has approximately 50 programs in the pipeline and seven projects showing at the IDFA Film Festival and one being presented at the IDFA Forum in November.
As we relaxed at our sidewalk cafe, astutely ignored by the wait staff which allowed us ample time to chat while sipping our Pellegrino, I asked Claire to talk about the fund, what types of programs they are funding, how much they are funding, what funds they have, their other funding partners, the funding review process, and some of her favorite projects that she has funded.
I'll start by saying that I first met Claire a little over a year ago at the French Screenings in St. Tropez, where we were the two lone American buyers and found ourselves seated next to each other over a three-course gourmet meal in a private courtyard shaded by oak trees. Claire is active in the international market, flying to Africa, Portugal, and France (and that's just in the last eight weeks) to find projects that meet her programming needs, encouraging international producers to submit to the International Call as well as meeting with her international colleagues. The only requirement for submission to the International Call is that the topic cannot be about or by Americans; it is for international producers addressing global topics. Rather than ask her to describe the fund's objectives, I asked what her two favorite recent projects are; with no hesitation she replied, "
That's easy: Stranded and Waltz with Bashir."
Stranded: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors is a documentary featuring the remaining survivors of the Uruguayan soccer team whose airplane crashed in the Andes. They survived for seventy-two days. According to Claire, what makes the doc so compelling is the personalities and their survival stories.
Likewise, Waltz With Bashir is an animated doc about an Israeli soldier's attempt to remember his involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon in 1982. Unusual as it is animated, the doc's strength is it's a personal story that has historical and current relevance.
Two other docs that Claire cited as coming directly out of the International Call were House of Saad and Cuba: An African Oddyssey. Both broadcast internationally and were co-produced with Nick Fraser of the BBC, who is frequently a partner along with other European broadcasters, such as TV2 in Denmark. The next submission deadline for the International Fund is February 1st.
On the domestic front, the next deadline for submission to the Open Call Fund is January 11th. The deadline for the International Fund is February 1.For both funds, ITVS receives roughly 300 submissions of which 30 are recommended and sent out for review. The review panel is a mix of commissioning editors, scholars, and media professionals. The reviewers recommend 10 from the 30 and then convene to discuss and finalize the recipients. The process from submission to release of funds takes five months.
Budgets submitted to Open Call go as high as $350,000. On average, Claire shared that a PBS budget is $600,000 per project with the majority of the money going above the line and that it is not unusual for there to be three executive producers attached to a project. A similar project from the U.K. would be made for $300,000. ITVS believes in providing enough money for a filmmaker/producer to pay themselves but often suggest that filmmakers also approach the NEH, the Sundance Fund, and POV for additional money as well consider seeking international co-pro partners if appropriate.
ITVS's funds have increased over the last eight years, even though under Michael Pack's time at the CPB there was pressure to fund and commission 'conservative films.' As Claire wryly pointed out, while they canvas for ethnicity and gender, it would be awkward to ask about a producer's political beliefs and integrate that information into their review process.
Leaving politics aside, as well as producing as a career for the wealthy as we polished off our pasta, we moved on to the thorny issue of contracts, schedules and deliverables. Since ITVS is a funding source and broadcaster rather than a grant agency, they ask for exclusive U.S. broadcast rights for a 4-7 years period as well as a credit and revenue share based on the contribution of the net. Many docs that they fund broadcast on the Sundance Channel, Nat Geo and Link TV in addition to PBS.
As our bill arrived I thanked Claire for her time and her support of MyFilmBlog.
The Prisoner, Or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair is a quiet film. By this I mean that there is no hyperbole, no drama, just one man's story about how he was falsely arrested and imprisoned for nearly nine moths by the American forces in Iraq. His story is a simple one, detailing faulty intelligence, a prison system based on an assumption of guilt, and finally his anti climatic release, accompanied by a "Sorry" from an American general.
It reminds me of Kafka's The Trial, even down to the epithet of "dog," that an American guard repeatedly hurled at Yunis during his interrogations. Fortunately, Yunis was released rather than executed "Like a dog!" and he tells his story to Michael Tucker, who filmed Yunis's initial arrest in 2003 while shooting Gunner Palace.
Unlike Josef K. in The Trial, Yunis is never brought before a judge, nor does he have a lawyer, since apparently he has no rights. What good is a lawyer when you are arrested, presumed guilty just because you are arrested, and there is no judge or jury?
Yunis is arrested, interrogated, and finally released. During his stay at Ganci 6, a camp next to Abu Ghraib, for prisoners deemed of "low or no importance," there is no hope of justice, just survival-the odds, however, are not good as the food is rancid, there is disease, and the resistance frequently hurls grenades into the camps, which then erupt into riots and shooting by the U.S. guards in a futile attempt to keep order and calm. Yunis is by training a journalist and was imprisoned as well under Saddam Hussein. In both instances of imprisonment, there is no trial, and upon release, he simply returns to his family and civilian life.
Abu Ghraib is internationally synonymous with humiliation and abuse: both forms of torture, one psychological, the other physical. As I watched Yunis speaking, I was struck by his dignity in the face of degradation. Again I was reminded of Kafka's novel and Herr K's final lament, "Like a dog!" Imprisonment without due process-without the assumption of innocence-robs people of their dignity and humanity. Perhaps dignity is one emotion that separates us from animals, or is it our elaborate legal system?
Yunis maintains his dignity throughout the telling of his story. As he speaks you see that for him his dignity is more important than refuting the false accusation, which amounts to nothing less than plotting to kill Tony Blair. At the end of the film he quips that he and Tony Blair are forever inseparable, connected like twins separated at birth by history: one a powerful man, the other an anonymous man swept up by events, quite literally a mere number in the machinery of U.S. policy in Iraq and our war on terrorism.
I'd like to think that Yunis's story is unique, an anomaly, an aberration; that like Herr K's trial, it was all a mistake. Yet the film suggests that all of Camp Ganci was populated by other Yunises: even his two brothers were yanked from their homes by American soldiers in the middle of the night, after a wedding party, loaded onto trucks, and sent for interrogation. When they did not supply confessions of their guilt or corroborate the evidence gathered by INTEL, off they went to Abu Ghraib or Ganci, which at one point had a population of 6,000.
No, Yunis was not unique. He most certainly was not alone. Due to his training as a journalist, he could speak English, a skill that he put to good use at the camp, working with the guards, and one in particular, Specialist Thompson, to keep the peace. If it were not for Thompson, the veracity of Yunis's story would be questionable as there is no official record of prisoner number 151186 in detainment.
Thompson's testimony lends the film its powerful objectivity. Specialist Thompson, a new recruit and former real estate agent, finds himself at Ganci. He describes the deplorable conditions and the efforts that he made with Yunis's help to ease the physical discomfort and keep calm in block 6 among rampant fear of attack, hunger, and sickness due to malnutrition and lack of sanitation. Thompson's testimony regarding Yunis's imprisonment and his role in helping to keep calm and order among the prisoners paint a picture of people in dire circumstances and tell how two individuals managed to penetrate the metal fence between guard and prisoner for their common good.
Yunis's story is one of quiet victory: His freedom is restored, and he receives an apology from the American general. The presence, however, of Thompson and his willingness to talk on camera about his experience at Ganci remind one that while bureaucracy under the guise of any ideology can be inhumane, and that guards can and do abuse prisoners, there are individuals who do not succumb to the lure of power because they have a gun or the anonymity of a uniform.
Tucker and Epperlein's film is powerful because it does not exaggerate, seek to accuse, or manipulate the viewer. Yunis tells his story in a stoic voice, occasionally pausing as he seeks to find the best English word, at one point even resorting to Arabic. He does not cry but he smokes continually. His voice is even and soft.
As an American viewer listening to his story, I experienced the emotional complements of Yunis's dignity: shame, guilt, and embarrassment. He never criticizes America or the American people, being very precise to distinguish between the army as an instrument of the American government's policy in his country and America as an ideal and its citizens.
Yunis is generous, even funny when he quips that the Americans have mistaken him for Rambo, given what he is accused of plotting. The comment is even funnier as he is physically slight, with glasses and a goatee speckled with gray. He is clearly no gun toting terrorist or assassin, just a journalist, a son, a brother.
This article originally appeared in The WIld River Review.
Peter Kaufman in Indiewire writes that DIY distribution will be a viable option for independent producers in 2014. My question is: Why wait for the year 2014? The scenario described is here now... but with an unexpected twist.
I agree that the days of traditional distribution are coming to an end as
distributors face decreasing box ticket returns from theatrical releases and
DVD sales and the promised pot of gold at the end of the proverbial digital
rainbow remains a mirage. Sundance, and top tier and some emerging niche
festivals, will remain key to generating recognition for independent films.
But the days of large advances from an independent distributor who relies on
DVD sales to recoup the theatrical cost from big box names, brick and mortar
outlets and online sales are waning. DIY distribution is already here and
is being successfully implemented… by a distributor.
Great article by Lance Weiler in the Winter 2008 Filmmaker's mag about digital distribution and generating online revenue for independent filmmakers. I think the most important point of the article, besides the benefits of working with a content aggregator/distributor, is that filmmakers need to be very technically savvy when it comes to self-distribution.
A lot of times filmmakers are advised to avoid working with traditional distributors, who are essentially described as greedy vultures, and to strike out on their own. The main challenge of doing so is creating awareness of your one, lone film and connecting it to your audience. There are a gazillion websites out there, two dominant social networking sites, and an undefined marketplace. Unless your potential customer can find you, no matter how good your film is they aren't going to buy it. This is not an original idea and a book that expresses this idea very eloquently is Ambient Findability by Peter Morville.
As a buyer of documentaries, factual series and digital content, I have gotten to know many filmmakers, producers and distributors over the last ten years. I have watched friends and colleagues go from a simple idea to a a completed film, wading through the muddy waters of fund raising, securing a broadcaster, international distribution, DVD licensing -- sorting out non-theatric vs. home video -- and then on to the next project, starting the whole process over again.
Every stage poses its challenges. Producing is a solitary process that requires four components: passion, patience, perseverance, and promotion. If you lack patience, your project will never be completed; even the best timelines mysteriously morph as raising production funds can, and usually does, take more time and energy than making the actual film. Without perseverance, each rejection letter, no matter how politely worded, will be like the fatal gun shot wound rather than the spaghetti stain on the wall it really is. Perhaps patience and perseverance are manifestations of passion but passion without promotion will mean that even a great idea will remain just that: an idea.