NEWS
Auditors strike up joint venture
In a joint venture between two leading players in the film auditing world, Christa Okkersen’s Licence Control and London- based HW Fisher & Company have announced the launch of their outfit Fisher Okkersen Film Audits. The two firms have decades of
experience auditing film and other intellectual property rights around the world. However, under the new venture, the
combined offering now provides an enlarged team of audit professionals and the ability to field multiple audits internationally. The aim now is for the new company to
work closely with US-based specialists in studio audits. “This ensures we do not encounter the
long delays which can frequently occur when attempting to secure dates for fieldwork — a problem often faced by our competitors,” Okkersen said. Fisher Okkersen Film Audits will offer
initial assessment of assignments without charge in order to assist with the decision-making process.
Geoffrey Macnab
BY GEOFFREY MACNAB Carlo Cresto-Dina’s Tempesta Film, the out- fit behind Alice Rohrwacher’s featureCorpo Celeste (screening in Directors’ Fortnight and sold by RAI Trade), has revealed details of two of its next projects. Rohrwacher is at work on a satirical com-
edy about the obsession with natural food which will take a sideswipe at the Slow Food movement. The second is hard-hitting Naples-set
drama The Break, to be directed by new- comer Leonardo di Costanzo. It is scripted by Maurizio Braucci, who co-wrote Cannes hit Gomorra. The film will be shot in an
Alice Rohrwacher Da Silva, Coskun projects picked for CineLink
BY VLADAN PETKOVIC Sarajevo Film Festival’s co-production mar- ket CineLink has announced its selection for the 2011 edition (July 27-30). It includesTideawayby Portuguese-born,
Vienna-based writer-director Hugo Vieira da Silva, whose Body Rice won a special mention at Locarno in 2006; Yozgat Blues by Turkish director Mahmut Fazil Coskun and writer Tarik Tufan, whose previous col- laboration Wrong Rosary won a Tiger in
Rotterdam in 2009; Mirko’s Gonna Fuck You Up by Bosnian writer-director Sasa Hajdukovic, whose first feature film32nd Of December was a moderate festival hit in Bosnia and Serbia; and365 New Year’s Eves, the feature debut of the Romanian writer Vlad Trandafir and director Paul Negoescu. Negoescu’s three shorts played in competi- tion at the Berlinale from 2008 to 2010, and Derby andRenovarewere nominated for the best short at the EFA in 2011 and 2009.
Rising costs threaten Venice’s Palazzo
BY GEOFFREY MACNAB The future of the Venice Film Festival’s new Palazzo del Cinema looks to be under renewed threat after Italian culture minis- ter Giancarlo Galan strongly suggested the government would not continue to pick up the bill after the discovery of asbestos on the construction site. Galan estimated the cost of removing the
asbestos would be $21m on top of the $28m already spent on the construction of the new building. He said: “More money is needed. I don’t really know how we will solve this situation.”
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Tempesta cooks up food satire
abandoned hospital near Naples. The $2m (¤1.4m) film will also be sold by RAI Trade. Tempesta is also setting up a crowd-
sourcing software system for cinema. And the company has recently signed a contract with Italian energy company Edison to develop a protocol for sustainable film production. Corpo Celeste follows 13-year-old Marta’s
struggle to resettle in the south of Italy after 10 years growing up in Switzerland. Follow- ing its world premiere in Cannes, the film will be released in Italy by Istituto Luce. It has also been acquired in France by Ad Vitam.
Other projects in the CineLink selection
are first features: A Happy Man by writer- director Davor Kanjir from Croatia;Humid- ity by Serbia’s Nikola Ljuca, co-written by Stasa Bajac; Odysseus by Montenegro’s Andro Martinovic and co-written by Andrej Nikolaidis;Spirit Of Dustby director Nesimi Yetik and writer Betul Esener from Turkey; Stage Fright by Yorgos Zois, co-written by Vasilios Kyriakopoulos from Greece; and The Wednesday Child by Hungarian writer- director Lili Horvath. » For the full story, see
ScreenDaily.com
Flashback expands
Hungary’s Tamas Zakonyi, head of production services company Flashback, has partnered up with fellow Hungarian Andras Erkel, CEO of Studio Baestarts, and Tony Miller, former head of Natural Nylon and the Odeon/BSkyB joint venture, to expand the company. Zakonyi and Erkel, who ran Studio Varga, will manage the company and Miller will run an affiliate office in London. Flashback is in Cannes to meet on international film and TV projects, and to market its services to producers and financiers looking to shoot in Hungary. Mike Goodridge
Russia, China team up for film fund
BY GEOFFREY MACNAB Midway through Cannes, JSC Sistema Mass-media (Russia) and Huawei (China) have announced the formation of a $50m Russian-Chinese Film Fund, which will support three projects in its first year. The fund will aim to encourage the coun-
tries to co-operate on media content pro- duction and also to strengthen relations between the two superpowers. The board of trustees will include Rus-
sia’s Ministry of Culture and the Federal Fund for Social and Economic Support for Russian Cinema. Representatives of the leading Chinese
and Russian media companies, such as China Film Group Corporation, China
n 10 Screen International at the Cannes Film Festival May 15, 2011
International Television Corporation, Shanghai Media & Entertainment Group, Russian World Studios and WeiT Media have been invited to join the fund’s commit- tee of industry experts. A number of co-productions are already
in the works between the new partners. The 1950s-set The Squadron, a story of Soviet and Chinese pilots, is among the first projects backed by the fund. There are also reportedly plans for a
movie about communist leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping as well as a film focusing on the Chinese intelligentsia in Russia in the early 20th century. More con- temporary stories as well as family films will also be backed.
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