Exclusive: Spring Films, the Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated British documentary producer, is shutting its doors.
Founded by André Singer, the company has filed for liquidation after 18 years of trading. Accountancy firm Azets has been appointed to oversee the winding-up process.
Singer and Spring Films CEO Chris Smith have been contacted for comment.
Spring Films has 12 employees listed on its website, while its most recent accounts showed debts worth £1.5M ($2M), according to a UK Companies House filing.
Night Will Fall, a film chronicling the making of the 1945 British government documentary German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, won outstanding historical programming at the 2016 News & Documentary Emmy Awards.
The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, which examined mass killings in Indonesia, were both Oscar-nominated. The Act of Killing won a BAFTA.
Spring Films’ other projects include Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer, a documentary that spotlighted the Fitzcarraldo director and some of his celebrated collaborators,...
Founded by André Singer, the company has filed for liquidation after 18 years of trading. Accountancy firm Azets has been appointed to oversee the winding-up process.
Singer and Spring Films CEO Chris Smith have been contacted for comment.
Spring Films has 12 employees listed on its website, while its most recent accounts showed debts worth £1.5M ($2M), according to a UK Companies House filing.
Night Will Fall, a film chronicling the making of the 1945 British government documentary German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, won outstanding historical programming at the 2016 News & Documentary Emmy Awards.
The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, which examined mass killings in Indonesia, were both Oscar-nominated. The Act of Killing won a BAFTA.
Spring Films’ other projects include Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer, a documentary that spotlighted the Fitzcarraldo director and some of his celebrated collaborators,...
- 10/24/2024
- by Jake Kanter
- Deadline Film + TV
American-European media fund Apx Group and André Singer’s Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning documentary and non-scripted company Spring Films have launched a joint production initiative.
Under the accord, Apx and Spring will form a joint venture entity in London, owned equally by both, in which Apx and Spring will invest in new productions over the next five years.
The joint venture will look to develop and produce new and breakthrough content.
The parties said they also saw the agreement as an opportunity to curate a library of “unique content” with global distribution potential.
Spring Films is behind a string of award-winning, non-fiction works including Singer’s 2014 production Night Will Fall, about a lost documentary shot by Alfred Hitchcock and Sidney Bernstein about German concentration camps, which won Peabody, Emmy and Rts awards.
Further highlights of its past slate include the Oscar-nominated and Bafta-winning The Act of Killing (2012) as well as The Inferno...
Under the accord, Apx and Spring will form a joint venture entity in London, owned equally by both, in which Apx and Spring will invest in new productions over the next five years.
The joint venture will look to develop and produce new and breakthrough content.
The parties said they also saw the agreement as an opportunity to curate a library of “unique content” with global distribution potential.
Spring Films is behind a string of award-winning, non-fiction works including Singer’s 2014 production Night Will Fall, about a lost documentary shot by Alfred Hitchcock and Sidney Bernstein about German concentration camps, which won Peabody, Emmy and Rts awards.
Further highlights of its past slate include the Oscar-nominated and Bafta-winning The Act of Killing (2012) as well as The Inferno...
- 3/16/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
U.K.-based MetFilm Sales has acquired worldwide sales rights, excluding the U.S., Germany and France, to Thomas von Steinaecker’s feature documentary “Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer” and is representing the project at Berlin’s European Film Market.
With exclusive behind-the-scenes access into the legendary German film director’s everyday life, rare archive material and in-depth interviews with Herzog and his collaborators — including Christian Bale, Nicole Kidman and his wife Lena Herzog — the film provides a glimpse into his work process and his personal life.
The documentary is presented by Emmy-winning film studio Wavelength, produced by Spring Films and 3B-Produktion in association with Hot Docs Partners. It is produced by Andre Singer, Bernhard Von Hulsen and Maria Willer. Executive producers include Jenifer Westphal and Joe Plummer for Wavelength, Figs Jackman and Chris Smith for Spring Films and Vijay Vaidyanathan.
The film had its world premiere at Telluride and has...
With exclusive behind-the-scenes access into the legendary German film director’s everyday life, rare archive material and in-depth interviews with Herzog and his collaborators — including Christian Bale, Nicole Kidman and his wife Lena Herzog — the film provides a glimpse into his work process and his personal life.
The documentary is presented by Emmy-winning film studio Wavelength, produced by Spring Films and 3B-Produktion in association with Hot Docs Partners. It is produced by Andre Singer, Bernhard Von Hulsen and Maria Willer. Executive producers include Jenifer Westphal and Joe Plummer for Wavelength, Figs Jackman and Chris Smith for Spring Films and Vijay Vaidyanathan.
The film had its world premiere at Telluride and has...
- 2/18/2023
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
The Wavelength title debuted at Telluride.
UK-based sales firm MetFilm Sales has acquired worldwide sales rights excluding US, Germany and France to Thomas von Steinaecker’s documentary Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer.
The German-uk co-production had its world premiere at Telluride Film Festival in September, before going on to play Cologne, IDFA, Cork and Santa Barbara film festivals.
Radical Dreamer combines archive material and interviews with both German director Herzog, and collaborators including Christian Bale, Nicole Kidman and Werner’s wife Lena Herzog.
It is presented by US studio Wavelength, and produced by the UK’s Spring Films and Germany’s...
UK-based sales firm MetFilm Sales has acquired worldwide sales rights excluding US, Germany and France to Thomas von Steinaecker’s documentary Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer.
The German-uk co-production had its world premiere at Telluride Film Festival in September, before going on to play Cologne, IDFA, Cork and Santa Barbara film festivals.
Radical Dreamer combines archive material and interviews with both German director Herzog, and collaborators including Christian Bale, Nicole Kidman and Werner’s wife Lena Herzog.
It is presented by US studio Wavelength, and produced by the UK’s Spring Films and Germany’s...
- 2/18/2023
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
BBC Storyville commissioning editor Philippa Kowarsky is departing the corporation to pursue other ventures. Director of BBC Film Eva Yates will be the interim commissioning contact for BBC Storyville until a replacement for Kowarsky is found.
In a notice to BBC staff, seen by Variety, Yates wrote: “I’m writing to let you know that Philippa Kowarsky will be leaving the team to pursue other ventures outside of the BBC. I would like to personally thank Philippa for her contribution to the success of Storyville over the past year, during which time she has built a rich and varied slate of films. I wish her all the best for her future plans.”
“We will update you soon on next steps for Storyville. In the interim, please come to me with any issues or commissioning decisions that may arise,” Yates added.
As director of BBC Film, Yates already had oversight of Storyville.
In a notice to BBC staff, seen by Variety, Yates wrote: “I’m writing to let you know that Philippa Kowarsky will be leaving the team to pursue other ventures outside of the BBC. I would like to personally thank Philippa for her contribution to the success of Storyville over the past year, during which time she has built a rich and varied slate of films. I wish her all the best for her future plans.”
“We will update you soon on next steps for Storyville. In the interim, please come to me with any issues or commissioning decisions that may arise,” Yates added.
As director of BBC Film, Yates already had oversight of Storyville.
- 8/4/2022
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
Exclusive: First Wind Film Development has optioned TV rights to Rick Bleiweiss’ recently published debut mystery novel Pignon Scorbion and the Barbershop Detectives, with Brendan Deneen and Josh Stanton of Blackstone Publishing attached to produce the adaptation.
The book is set in 1910, in the small English municipality of Haxford, which has a new Chief Police Inspector. At first, the dapper and unflappable Pignon Scorbion, a Brit of Egyptian and Haitian descent, strikes something of an odd figure among the locals. But it isn’t long before Haxford finds itself very much in need of a detective. Investigating a trio of crimes whose origins span half a century, Scorbion interviews a parade of people with potential motives, but with every apparent clue, new surprises come to light. And just as it seems nothing can derail Scorbion, in walks Thelma Smith—dazzling, whip-smart, and newly single. Has Scorbion finally met his match?...
The book is set in 1910, in the small English municipality of Haxford, which has a new Chief Police Inspector. At first, the dapper and unflappable Pignon Scorbion, a Brit of Egyptian and Haitian descent, strikes something of an odd figure among the locals. But it isn’t long before Haxford finds itself very much in need of a detective. Investigating a trio of crimes whose origins span half a century, Scorbion interviews a parade of people with potential motives, but with every apparent clue, new surprises come to light. And just as it seems nothing can derail Scorbion, in walks Thelma Smith—dazzling, whip-smart, and newly single. Has Scorbion finally met his match?...
- 4/5/2022
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
The 10th Chinese Visual Festival (Cvf) will be held in London 15 – 25 July at BFI Southbank and Genesis Cinema. The UK’s only festival dedicated to the cinema of the Chinese language speaking world, this year’s event sees a highly anticipated return to in-person screenings for Cvf, giving audiences the chance to catch a carefully curated selection of fantastic films on the big screen where they belong. This year’s line-up features a programme of unprecedented variety, covering a wide range of genres, forms and subjects, welcoming film lovers back to cinemas with ten days of unmissable films. Cvf 2021 is supported by the Department of Film Studies, King’s College London and the Taipei Representative Office in the U.K. and the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan (R.O.C.).
This year’s festival opens with the UK Premiere of Drifting, from Hong Kong writer director Jun Li, whose ground-breaking trans drama Tracey screened...
This year’s festival opens with the UK Premiere of Drifting, from Hong Kong writer director Jun Li, whose ground-breaking trans drama Tracey screened...
- 6/25/2021
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
For the second year running, Sheffield DocFest’s flagship pitching forum MeetMarket is taking place virtually. That’s not holding back the number of projects applying: MeetMarket has had more than 550 applications this year. From these, MeetMarket has selected 55 projects, which will have the chance to present to more than 300 international funders, broadcasters, distributors, festival programmers and exhibitors.
They will be seeking to follow in the footsteps of high-profile documentaries that have previously come through MeetMarket while looking for funding or partners, including Malik Bendjelloul’s “Searching for Sugarman,” Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Act of Killing” and Nanfu Wang’s “One Child Nation.”
Sheffield DocFest head of industry Patrick Hurley says there were concerns about the number and nature of projects that might apply this year, given the background of the pandemic. Would the wheels still be turning on projects preparing to pitch? Would they qualitatively be different because of travel bans and restrictions?...
They will be seeking to follow in the footsteps of high-profile documentaries that have previously come through MeetMarket while looking for funding or partners, including Malik Bendjelloul’s “Searching for Sugarman,” Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Act of Killing” and Nanfu Wang’s “One Child Nation.”
Sheffield DocFest head of industry Patrick Hurley says there were concerns about the number and nature of projects that might apply this year, given the background of the pandemic. Would the wheels still be turning on projects preparing to pitch? Would they qualitatively be different because of travel bans and restrictions?...
- 6/1/2021
- by Tim Dams
- Variety Film + TV
Haydn Keenan’s Smart Street Films has optioned Geoffrey Robertson’s book which argues that treasures that were forcefully or lawlessly acquired over centuries should be returned to their rightful owners.
Keenan and British/Australian executive producer Amanda Groom are planning an international docuseries as a co-production with the UK’s Spring Films, an Oscar nominated, Emmy Award winning production company specialising in high-end feature and television documentaries.
Headed by André Singer, Spring Films’ credits include Meeting Gorbachev, co-directed by Werner Herzog and Singer; the Channel 4 trilogy Prison, set in women’s prison Foston Hall; and Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds, co-directed by Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer.
Robertson’s Who Owns History?: Elgin’s Loot and the Case for Returning Plundered Treasure makes the case for returning the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum to Athens.
Fronted by Robertson and to be shot in Australia, China, West Africa and the Middle East,...
Keenan and British/Australian executive producer Amanda Groom are planning an international docuseries as a co-production with the UK’s Spring Films, an Oscar nominated, Emmy Award winning production company specialising in high-end feature and television documentaries.
Headed by André Singer, Spring Films’ credits include Meeting Gorbachev, co-directed by Werner Herzog and Singer; the Channel 4 trilogy Prison, set in women’s prison Foston Hall; and Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds, co-directed by Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer.
Robertson’s Who Owns History?: Elgin’s Loot and the Case for Returning Plundered Treasure makes the case for returning the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum to Athens.
Fronted by Robertson and to be shot in Australia, China, West Africa and the Middle East,...
- 10/11/2020
- by The IF Team
- IF.com.au
Apple has acquired rights to Werner Herzog’s astronomy documentary “Fireball” for its Apple Original film slate and will premiere the film on Apple TV Plus in more than 100 territories.
Herzog collaborated with British professor Clive Oppenheimer on the project. The duo teamed on the Academy Award-nominated Antarctic documentary “Encounters at the End of the World” and the Emmy-nominated “Into the Inferno.“
“Fireball” explores how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future. It’s a Werner Herzog Film production from Spring Films. The film is produced by André Singer & Lucki Stipetić, executive produced by Richard Melman and made with the help and support of Sandbox Films.
Apple Original’s documentaries include “Boys State”; “The Elephant Queen”; “Beastie Boys Story” and docuseries “Visible: Out On Television.” “Boys State” won the U.S. documentary competition at...
Herzog collaborated with British professor Clive Oppenheimer on the project. The duo teamed on the Academy Award-nominated Antarctic documentary “Encounters at the End of the World” and the Emmy-nominated “Into the Inferno.“
“Fireball” explores how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future. It’s a Werner Herzog Film production from Spring Films. The film is produced by André Singer & Lucki Stipetić, executive produced by Richard Melman and made with the help and support of Sandbox Films.
Apple Original’s documentaries include “Boys State”; “The Elephant Queen”; “Beastie Boys Story” and docuseries “Visible: Out On Television.” “Boys State” won the U.S. documentary competition at...
- 7/24/2020
- by Dave McNary
- Variety Film + TV
Apple announced Friday that it will release a new Werner Herzog documentary, “Fireball,” on its Apple TV+ platform. The film explores how shooting stars, meteorites, and deep impacts on Earth have shaped human mythology and focused our attention on other realms and worlds.
“Fireball” will mark the third collaboration between the legendary director and geoscientist Clive Oppenheimer, who is co-directing the doc.
Oppenheimer, a professor of volcanology at the University of Cambridge, appeared in Herzog’s 2007 Antarctica-set Oscar-nominated “Encounters at the End of the World,” and again in Netflix’s 2016 doc “Into the Inferno.” That most recent film earned an Emmy nomination and followed the pair as they traveled the world to explore various volcanic sites. Much like “Fireball,” that film also drew connections between natural phenomena and its impact on humankind.
“Fireball” will also reunite Herzog with “Inferno” producers André Singer and Lucki Stipetić. Werner Herzog Film is producing alongside Spring Films,...
“Fireball” will mark the third collaboration between the legendary director and geoscientist Clive Oppenheimer, who is co-directing the doc.
Oppenheimer, a professor of volcanology at the University of Cambridge, appeared in Herzog’s 2007 Antarctica-set Oscar-nominated “Encounters at the End of the World,” and again in Netflix’s 2016 doc “Into the Inferno.” That most recent film earned an Emmy nomination and followed the pair as they traveled the world to explore various volcanic sites. Much like “Fireball,” that film also drew connections between natural phenomena and its impact on humankind.
“Fireball” will also reunite Herzog with “Inferno” producers André Singer and Lucki Stipetić. Werner Herzog Film is producing alongside Spring Films,...
- 7/24/2020
- by Chris Lindahl
- Indiewire
Apple has acquired rights to Fireball, Werner Herzog’s latest documentary feature, which is now part of the Apple Original film slate and will have its global premiere on Apple TV+. A date has not yet been set.
Fireball reunites Herzog with Professor Clive Oppenheimer for their third pic together following the 2007’s Oscar-nominated Encounters at the End of the World set in Antarctica and the Emmy-nominated 2016 pic Into the Inferno which explored active volcanoes. The new docu reveals how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future.
The pic, first announced in October 2018, hails from Spring Films with the help and support of Sandbox Films. André Singer and Lucki Stipetić are producers. Richard Melman is executive producer.
Fireball now joins fellow Apple Original documentaries including the upcoming Sundance-winning Boys State as well as the already released The Elephant Queen,...
Fireball reunites Herzog with Professor Clive Oppenheimer for their third pic together following the 2007’s Oscar-nominated Encounters at the End of the World set in Antarctica and the Emmy-nominated 2016 pic Into the Inferno which explored active volcanoes. The new docu reveals how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future.
The pic, first announced in October 2018, hails from Spring Films with the help and support of Sandbox Films. André Singer and Lucki Stipetić are producers. Richard Melman is executive producer.
Fireball now joins fellow Apple Original documentaries including the upcoming Sundance-winning Boys State as well as the already released The Elephant Queen,...
- 7/24/2020
- by Patrick Hipes
- Deadline Film + TV
Veteran filmmaker reunites with Professor Clive Oppenheimer.
Apple TV+ on Friday (July 24) is planning the worldwide launch of Fireball, an original documentary from Werner Herzog.
The veteran filmmaker reunites with Professor Clive Oppenheimer from Encounters At The End Of The World and Into The Inferno on the film.
Fireball explores how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future.
The feature is produced by Werner Herzog Film production and Spring Films. André Singer and Lucki Stipetić served as producers and Richard Melman served as executive...
Apple TV+ on Friday (July 24) is planning the worldwide launch of Fireball, an original documentary from Werner Herzog.
The veteran filmmaker reunites with Professor Clive Oppenheimer from Encounters At The End Of The World and Into The Inferno on the film.
Fireball explores how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future.
The feature is produced by Werner Herzog Film production and Spring Films. André Singer and Lucki Stipetić served as producers and Richard Melman served as executive...
- 7/24/2020
- by 36¦Jeremy Kay¦54¦
- ScreenDaily
Apple is boosting its documentary slate with a pickup for Fireball, an upcoming feature from Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer.
The doc's focus will be on how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future. Herzog and Oppenheimer, who co-directed Fireball, previously worked together on Oscar-nominated Encounters at the End of the World and Emmy-nominated Into the Inferno.
Werner Herzog Film and Rts are behind the feature, which will be produced by André Singer and Lucki Stipetić, and executive produced by Richard Melman. Sandbox Films is ...
The doc's focus will be on how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future. Herzog and Oppenheimer, who co-directed Fireball, previously worked together on Oscar-nominated Encounters at the End of the World and Emmy-nominated Into the Inferno.
Werner Herzog Film and Rts are behind the feature, which will be produced by André Singer and Lucki Stipetić, and executive produced by Richard Melman. Sandbox Films is ...
- 7/24/2020
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Apple is boosting its documentary slate with a pickup for Fireball, an upcoming feature from Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer.
The doc's focus will be on how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future. Herzog and Oppenheimer, who co-directed Fireball, previously worked together on Oscar-nominated Encounters at the End of the World and Emmy-nominated Into the Inferno.
Werner Herzog Film and Rts are behind the feature, which will be produced by André Singer and Lucki Stipetić, and executive produced by Richard Melman. Sandbox Films is ...
The doc's focus will be on how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future. Herzog and Oppenheimer, who co-directed Fireball, previously worked together on Oscar-nominated Encounters at the End of the World and Emmy-nominated Into the Inferno.
Werner Herzog Film and Rts are behind the feature, which will be produced by André Singer and Lucki Stipetić, and executive produced by Richard Melman. Sandbox Films is ...
- 7/24/2020
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
The great director quizzes the former Ussr leader in a grandly presented documentary that fails to address the Putin question
Werner Herzog shares a co-directing credit with British documentarist André Singer here, but really this is Herzog’s show, a self-consciously grand head-to-head between the great director and the great historical figure. Despite the film’s obvious interest, it is a bit conceited and stately, a little like Wim Wenders’ movie about Pope Francis, though without the sycophancy. Or almost. This is Herzog’s encounter with Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Ussr president and the last great figure from the end of the cold war, now that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are no longer with us.
The last time Gorbachev appeared on screen was in the recent terrifying TV drama Chernobyl, played by the Swedish actor David Dencik, as an enigmatic, enclosed figure, and perhaps many of the audience assumed...
Werner Herzog shares a co-directing credit with British documentarist André Singer here, but really this is Herzog’s show, a self-consciously grand head-to-head between the great director and the great historical figure. Despite the film’s obvious interest, it is a bit conceited and stately, a little like Wim Wenders’ movie about Pope Francis, though without the sycophancy. Or almost. This is Herzog’s encounter with Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Ussr president and the last great figure from the end of the cold war, now that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are no longer with us.
The last time Gorbachev appeared on screen was in the recent terrifying TV drama Chernobyl, played by the Swedish actor David Dencik, as an enigmatic, enclosed figure, and perhaps many of the audience assumed...
- 11/8/2019
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Bill Condon’s ‘The Good Liar’, Roland Emmerich’s ‘Midway’ also open this weekend.
eOne’s The Aeronauts will hope to capitalise on momentum gained through a debut on Monday, November 4, as it heads into its first weekend in UK cinemas.
Directed by Tom Harper (Wild Rose), the film reunites The Theory Of Everything co-stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones as a scientist and pilot respectively, looking to fly their hot air balloon higher than anyone has ever been.
The film debuted at Telluride Film Festival in August, going on to screen at Toronto and London.
Redmayne and Jones both...
eOne’s The Aeronauts will hope to capitalise on momentum gained through a debut on Monday, November 4, as it heads into its first weekend in UK cinemas.
Directed by Tom Harper (Wild Rose), the film reunites The Theory Of Everything co-stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones as a scientist and pilot respectively, looking to fly their hot air balloon higher than anyone has ever been.
The film debuted at Telluride Film Festival in August, going on to screen at Toronto and London.
Redmayne and Jones both...
- 11/8/2019
- by 1101321¦Ben Dalton¦26¦
- ScreenDaily
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options–not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.
Goodbye First Love (Mia Hansen-Løve)
One of the best coming-of-age films of the decade, what begins as a fairly standard, but intimately captured story of young passion quickly blossoms to one of the most mature takes on such an event thanks to Mia Hansen-Løve’s remarkably natural style and a script that’s conscious of time and its effects on love. Praise must also go to Lola Creton and Sebastian Urzendowsky for seemingly organic chemistry from such material. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Mubi (free for 30 days)
The Man From London (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky)
Upon the release of The Man from London, one might...
Goodbye First Love (Mia Hansen-Løve)
One of the best coming-of-age films of the decade, what begins as a fairly standard, but intimately captured story of young passion quickly blossoms to one of the most mature takes on such an event thanks to Mia Hansen-Løve’s remarkably natural style and a script that’s conscious of time and its effects on love. Praise must also go to Lola Creton and Sebastian Urzendowsky for seemingly organic chemistry from such material. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Mubi (free for 30 days)
The Man From London (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky)
Upon the release of The Man from London, one might...
- 8/2/2019
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The specialty box office is still in the doldrums as summer approaches, save for some breakouts. Showing some zest this weekend was Sundance’s The Souvenir from filmmaker Joanna Hogg, taking the weekend’s highest per theater average at $21,463. The A24 title starring newcomer Honor Swinton Byrne as well as her real-life mother Tilda Swinton (who plays her mother in the feature) and Tom Burke grossed $85,851 in four theaters.
“The film played to younger and older audiences in both markets this weekend with critics championing Honor Swinton Byrne’s heartbreaking and star-making performance in an expertly crafted romantic drama as one of the best of the year,” touted A24 Sunday.
How the film continues in the box office remains to be seen, but there’s already a sequel on the docket. “It’s a sign of confidence from investors in the project,” said The Souvenir producer Luke Schiller earlier this week.
“The film played to younger and older audiences in both markets this weekend with critics championing Honor Swinton Byrne’s heartbreaking and star-making performance in an expertly crafted romantic drama as one of the best of the year,” touted A24 Sunday.
How the film continues in the box office remains to be seen, but there’s already a sequel on the docket. “It’s a sign of confidence from investors in the project,” said The Souvenir producer Luke Schiller earlier this week.
- 5/19/2019
- by Brian Brooks
- Deadline Film + TV
Telluride and Toronto documentary The Biggest Little Farm by John Chester reaped a solid start over the weekend with the best per theater average in the three-day. The Neon release grossed an estimated $101K in five theaters, averaging $20,202. The PTA is the highest of Neon’s three 2019 non-fiction releases, though Apollo 11 went out in a comparatively wider 120 locations in its debut for $1.6M in its launch weekend, averaging $13,929. Apollo 11 has totaled $8.64M.
Amazing Grace played a December weekend in three theaters before its April start for the title’s regular theatrical run. It has cumed $3.28M to date.
Kenneth Branagh-directed historical drama All Is True bowed in four theaters for $46,809 in four locations, averaging $11,702, the second best of the specialty reporting specialty newcomers. Other debuts had below five-figure PTAs. Kino Lorber’s Pasolini starring Willem Dafoe played...
Amazing Grace played a December weekend in three theaters before its April start for the title’s regular theatrical run. It has cumed $3.28M to date.
Kenneth Branagh-directed historical drama All Is True bowed in four theaters for $46,809 in four locations, averaging $11,702, the second best of the specialty reporting specialty newcomers. Other debuts had below five-figure PTAs. Kino Lorber’s Pasolini starring Willem Dafoe played...
- 5/12/2019
- by Brian Brooks
- Deadline Film + TV
Company unveils plans for its summer slate including ‘Maradona’, ‘Horrible Histories’.
Altitude Film Distribution, the releasing arm of UK mini-studio Altitude Film Entertainment, has added four titles to its UK release slate.
The company has picked up rights to Andre Singer and Werner Herzog’s documentary Meeting Gorbachev. The film, which premiered at Telluride last year, sees Herzog interview the former general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to get an insight into his life and career. Altitude picked up the title from History Films and will release in November.
Altitude has also bought Little Monsters, the...
Altitude Film Distribution, the releasing arm of UK mini-studio Altitude Film Entertainment, has added four titles to its UK release slate.
The company has picked up rights to Andre Singer and Werner Herzog’s documentary Meeting Gorbachev. The film, which premiered at Telluride last year, sees Herzog interview the former general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to get an insight into his life and career. Altitude picked up the title from History Films and will release in November.
Altitude has also bought Little Monsters, the...
- 5/10/2019
- by Tom Grater
- ScreenDaily
‘Meeting Gorbachev’ A Film by Werner Herzog and André SingerHow tragic it was for us all that the putsch that overthrew Gorbachev and was repudiated by the people of Ussr morphed into his eventual downfall and he was replaced by the alcoholic Yeltsin who was then replaced by Putin.Werner Herzog and Mikhail Gorbachev
Gorbachev was a true man of the people and embodied the Soviet ideal, and in fact, the ideal of everyone in the world, that a man of integrity can rise from the bottom to the top. Meeting Gorbachev endears him to you.
Watch the trailer here.
Werner Herzog and his co-director — — portray their own prejudices as Germans and Gorbachev diffuses them. In the course of this loving documentary — -which opens with the almost noblesse oblige acknowledgment that of course, Gorbachev as a Russian must hate the Germans for the millions of Russians they killed during the war.
Gorbachev was a true man of the people and embodied the Soviet ideal, and in fact, the ideal of everyone in the world, that a man of integrity can rise from the bottom to the top. Meeting Gorbachev endears him to you.
Watch the trailer here.
Werner Herzog and his co-director — — portray their own prejudices as Germans and Gorbachev diffuses them. In the course of this loving documentary — -which opens with the almost noblesse oblige acknowledgment that of course, Gorbachev as a Russian must hate the Germans for the millions of Russians they killed during the war.
- 4/15/2019
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
A&E IndieFilms and Sundance Institute have selected four recipients for their inaugural “Brave Storytellers Award,” an honor that is intended to provide financial support for documentary filmmakers. The winners are Cecilia Aldarondo, Jemka Autry, Margaret Brown, and Yoruba Richen.
Each honoree will receive $25,000 in seed funding, as well as year-round mentorship from staff of the Sundance Institute, a non-profit filmmaking organization. A&E IndieFilms will then work with Sundance Institute to support the recipients’ projects through development, production and distribution.
The projects being supported by the grants cover a range of subjects. Richen’s “American Reckoning” will grapple with the FBI’s recent series of investigations into hundreds of unsolved civil rights era murders. Autry’s “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” examines the prosecution of the jazz singer on drug charges. And Aldarondo’s “You Were My First Boyfriend” reexamines life in high school.
Brown’s project is dubbed “Africatown,...
Each honoree will receive $25,000 in seed funding, as well as year-round mentorship from staff of the Sundance Institute, a non-profit filmmaking organization. A&E IndieFilms will then work with Sundance Institute to support the recipients’ projects through development, production and distribution.
The projects being supported by the grants cover a range of subjects. Richen’s “American Reckoning” will grapple with the FBI’s recent series of investigations into hundreds of unsolved civil rights era murders. Autry’s “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” examines the prosecution of the jazz singer on drug charges. And Aldarondo’s “You Were My First Boyfriend” reexamines life in high school.
Brown’s project is dubbed “Africatown,...
- 1/25/2019
- by Brent Lang
- Variety Film + TV
The Orchard has acquired the North American rights to Meeting Gorbachev from directors Werner Herzog and Andre Singer.
History Films, the A&E network's independent film label, has retained all television rights. Meeting Gorbachev is The Orchard's third collaboration with History, after Oscar-nominated films Cartel Land and Life, Animated.
The feature is a behind-the-scenes memoir from the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. Having been General Secretary of the governing Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 199, Gorbachev became one of the world’s most established politicians of the 20th century....
History Films, the A&E network's independent film label, has retained all television rights. Meeting Gorbachev is The Orchard's third collaboration with History, after Oscar-nominated films Cartel Land and Life, Animated.
The feature is a behind-the-scenes memoir from the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. Having been General Secretary of the governing Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 199, Gorbachev became one of the world’s most established politicians of the 20th century....
- 12/7/2018
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The Orchard has acquired the North American rights to Meeting Gorbachev, from directors Werner Herzog and Andre Singer.
History Films, the A&E Network's independent film label, has retained all television rights. Meeting Gorbachev is the Orchard's third collaboration with History, after Oscar-nominated films Cartel Land and Life, Animated.
The feature is a behind-the-scenes memoir from the eighth, and last, leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. Having been General Secretary of the governing Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, Gorbachev became one of the world’s most established politicians of the 20th century....
History Films, the A&E Network's independent film label, has retained all television rights. Meeting Gorbachev is the Orchard's third collaboration with History, after Oscar-nominated films Cartel Land and Life, Animated.
The feature is a behind-the-scenes memoir from the eighth, and last, leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. Having been General Secretary of the governing Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, Gorbachev became one of the world’s most established politicians of the 20th century....
- 12/7/2018
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
To put it mildly, Werner Herzog has his own take on things, so it comes as no surprise that one of the most recent projects by the prolific international director does not follow the rules of normal political biography. Over a six-month period, and without a prepared script, Herzog conducted three interviews with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that covered a multitude of topics, some of it geopolitical, much of it personal, and more than a little of it highly idiosyncratic. That’s not to say Herzog takes his subject lightly: Gorbachev was instrumental in German reunification in the late 1980s, a subject very close to the Munich-born director’s heart, and this issue is raised in a film that covers a lot of ground, from Gorbachev’s rise in the Communist Party, to dealing with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, to negotiating with U.S. President Ronald Reagan over the nuclear arms race,...
- 10/27/2018
- by Damon Wise
- Variety Film + TV
Ever-intrepid filmmaker Werner Herzog is gearing up for his next wide-ranging cinematic exploration of the universe. Variety reports that the “Grizzly Man” and “Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World” documentarian has set his sights on “Fireball,” a feature-length documentary about “meteorites and comets and their influence on mythology and religion.” Production on the film is already under way.
Herzog will co-direct the film alongside geoscientist Prof. Clive Oppenheimer; the duo previously collaborated on the Emmy-nominated 2016 Netflix documentary “Into the Inferno.” That film followed the pair as they traveled the world to explore various volcanic sites. Much like “Fireball,” that film also drew connections between natural phenomena and its impact on humankind.
Variety adds that “they will once more go globe-trotting, this time to visit sites that yield insight into comets and meteorites and help them understand what they can tell us about the origins of life on Earth.
Herzog will co-direct the film alongside geoscientist Prof. Clive Oppenheimer; the duo previously collaborated on the Emmy-nominated 2016 Netflix documentary “Into the Inferno.” That film followed the pair as they traveled the world to explore various volcanic sites. Much like “Fireball,” that film also drew connections between natural phenomena and its impact on humankind.
Variety adds that “they will once more go globe-trotting, this time to visit sites that yield insight into comets and meteorites and help them understand what they can tell us about the origins of life on Earth.
- 10/12/2018
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Werner Herzog is making “Fireball,” a feature documentary about meteorites and comets and their influence on mythology and religion. Production is underway, and international buyers will get a first look at the Mipcom market in Cannes next week.
“Fireball” reunites the legendary filmmaker with Prof. Clive Oppenheimer. Herzog and geoscientist Oppenheimer previously collaborated on the Emmy-nominated feature documentary “Into the Inferno” for Netflix. That expeditionary film saw the pair travel the globe to visit volcanic sites and explore their impact on humankind.
The producers of “Into the Inferno,” Andre Singer and Lucki Stipetic, are both on board “Fireball.” Herzog and Oppenheimer will co-direct. They will once more go globe-trotting, this time to visit sites that yield insight into comets and meteorites and help them understand what they can tell us about the origins of life on Earth.
Factual producer Spring Films is making “Fireball” with Herzog’s own shingle, Wefjarner Herzog Filmproduktion.
“Fireball” reunites the legendary filmmaker with Prof. Clive Oppenheimer. Herzog and geoscientist Oppenheimer previously collaborated on the Emmy-nominated feature documentary “Into the Inferno” for Netflix. That expeditionary film saw the pair travel the globe to visit volcanic sites and explore their impact on humankind.
The producers of “Into the Inferno,” Andre Singer and Lucki Stipetic, are both on board “Fireball.” Herzog and Oppenheimer will co-direct. They will once more go globe-trotting, this time to visit sites that yield insight into comets and meteorites and help them understand what they can tell us about the origins of life on Earth.
Factual producer Spring Films is making “Fireball” with Herzog’s own shingle, Wefjarner Herzog Filmproduktion.
- 10/12/2018
- by Stewart Clarke
- Variety Film + TV
Festival doc activity included the Marche’s Doc Corner and a buzzy Doc Day that welcomed European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet.
The Cannes L’Œil d’or (Golden Eye) documentary award has been presented to Stefano Savona’s Samouni Road.
The $5,900 priz is presented by Lascam (the French-speaking authors’ society) and its president, Julie Bertuccelli, in collaboration with the Cannes Film Festival, with the support of Ina (French National Audiovisual Institute) and, new for this year, Audiens.
The jury – headed by director Emmanuel Finkiel – praised the Directors’ Fortnight entry for its “intelligent way of filming, the right distance in its point of view,...
The Cannes L’Œil d’or (Golden Eye) documentary award has been presented to Stefano Savona’s Samouni Road.
The $5,900 priz is presented by Lascam (the French-speaking authors’ society) and its president, Julie Bertuccelli, in collaboration with the Cannes Film Festival, with the support of Ina (French National Audiovisual Institute) and, new for this year, Audiens.
The jury – headed by director Emmanuel Finkiel – praised the Directors’ Fortnight entry for its “intelligent way of filming, the right distance in its point of view,...
- 5/20/2018
- by Wendy Mitchell
- ScreenDaily
Werner Herzog collaborator Spring Films plots ambitious project.
UK documentary producer and director André Singer (The Act Of Killing) has revealed he is working on an ambitious new project about iconic former Russian statesman Mikhail Gorbachev and his role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Singer, the regular Werner Herzog collaborator who produces under the banner of London-based Spring Films, unveiled the project – titled The Enigma Of Mikhail Gorbachev – as one of the central pitches at Sunny Side Of The Doc (Ssd) on Tuesday (June 20).
The feature documentary and series will focus on Gorbachev’s six-year reign as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Cpsu) from 1985 to 1991, during which time his policies of “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (restructuring) hastened the dissolution of the Soviet Union, fall of Russian-style communism and the end of the Cold War.
“There’s a surprising amount of material about Gorbachev in film but there has not been...
UK documentary producer and director André Singer (The Act Of Killing) has revealed he is working on an ambitious new project about iconic former Russian statesman Mikhail Gorbachev and his role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Singer, the regular Werner Herzog collaborator who produces under the banner of London-based Spring Films, unveiled the project – titled The Enigma Of Mikhail Gorbachev – as one of the central pitches at Sunny Side Of The Doc (Ssd) on Tuesday (June 20).
The feature documentary and series will focus on Gorbachev’s six-year reign as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Cpsu) from 1985 to 1991, during which time his policies of “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (restructuring) hastened the dissolution of the Soviet Union, fall of Russian-style communism and the end of the Cold War.
“There’s a surprising amount of material about Gorbachev in film but there has not been...
- 6/20/2017
- ScreenDaily
History-focused 28th edition of documentary and factual content event runs June 19-22 in La Rochelle.
Upcoming documentaries exploring the life of Mikhail Gorbachev, the space race and Jackie Kennedy’s anti-segregationist work will be among the projects being presented at this year’s Sunny Side of the Doc (Ssd) this year.
The 28th edition of the documentary and factual content market and conference, running June 19-22 on the historic docks of the picturesque French port town of La Rochelle, is putting the onus on history this year.
The focus is in keeping with Ssd’s four-year cycle alternating the annual theme between history, science, human interest and wildlife. But the fact the history theme falls this year is also timely, comments founding director Yves Jeanneau.
“The phrase ‘reinventing history’ sums up what’s going on at the moment. We’re witnessing a renewal and rejuvenation in the way history is being told, both in terms...
Upcoming documentaries exploring the life of Mikhail Gorbachev, the space race and Jackie Kennedy’s anti-segregationist work will be among the projects being presented at this year’s Sunny Side of the Doc (Ssd) this year.
The 28th edition of the documentary and factual content market and conference, running June 19-22 on the historic docks of the picturesque French port town of La Rochelle, is putting the onus on history this year.
The focus is in keeping with Ssd’s four-year cycle alternating the annual theme between history, science, human interest and wildlife. But the fact the history theme falls this year is also timely, comments founding director Yves Jeanneau.
“The phrase ‘reinventing history’ sums up what’s going on at the moment. We’re witnessing a renewal and rejuvenation in the way history is being told, both in terms...
- 6/20/2017
- ScreenDaily
Exclusive: Hybrid work stars singer Neneh Cherry in debut acting role.
The BFI has acquired UK and Ireland distribution rights to Mark Cousins’ Stockholm My Love which world premieres at the BFI London Film Festival today (Oct 11).
The work marks a first fiction feature for experimental documentary-maker Cousins whose recent titles include Life May Be and 6 Desires: Dh Lawrence And Sardinia.
Swedish-born Buffalo Stance singer Neneh Cherry makes her acting debut as Alva, a Swedish architect suffering from debilitating depression following a traumatic traffic accident.
As the first anniversary of the incident approaches, Alva abandons her work to walk the streets of her beloved home city of Stockholm, exploring her past and the event that triggered her depression.
Cherry provides a poetic voiceover and sings five songs for the eclectic soundtrack, which also includes music by Abba co-founder Benny Anderson and 19th-century composer Franz Berwald.
The film sees Cousins collaborate for a second time with legendary cinematographer...
The BFI has acquired UK and Ireland distribution rights to Mark Cousins’ Stockholm My Love which world premieres at the BFI London Film Festival today (Oct 11).
The work marks a first fiction feature for experimental documentary-maker Cousins whose recent titles include Life May Be and 6 Desires: Dh Lawrence And Sardinia.
Swedish-born Buffalo Stance singer Neneh Cherry makes her acting debut as Alva, a Swedish architect suffering from debilitating depression following a traumatic traffic accident.
As the first anniversary of the incident approaches, Alva abandons her work to walk the streets of her beloved home city of Stockholm, exploring her past and the event that triggered her depression.
Cherry provides a poetic voiceover and sings five songs for the eclectic soundtrack, which also includes music by Abba co-founder Benny Anderson and 19th-century composer Franz Berwald.
The film sees Cousins collaborate for a second time with legendary cinematographer...
- 10/11/2016
- ScreenDaily
Exclusive: Hybrid work stars singer Neneh Cherry in debut acting role.
The BFI has acquired UK and Ireland distribution rights to Mark Cousins’ Stockholm My Love which world premieres at the BFI London Film Festival today (Oct 11).
The work marks a first fiction feature for experimental documentary-maker Cousins whose recent titles include Life May Be and 6 Desires: Dh Lawrence And Sardinia.
Swedish-born Buffalo Stance singer Neneh Cherry makes her acting debut as Alva, a Swedish architect suffering from debilitating depression following a traumatic traffic accident.
As the first anniversary of the incident approaches, Alva abandons her work to walk the streets of her beloved home city of Stockholm, exploring her past and the event that triggered her depression.
Cherry provides a poetic voiceover and sings five songs for the eclectic soundtrack, which also includes music by Abba co-founder Benny Anderson and 19th-century composer Franz Berwald.
The film sees Cousins collaborate for a second time with legendary cinematographer...
The BFI has acquired UK and Ireland distribution rights to Mark Cousins’ Stockholm My Love which world premieres at the BFI London Film Festival today (Oct 11).
The work marks a first fiction feature for experimental documentary-maker Cousins whose recent titles include Life May Be and 6 Desires: Dh Lawrence And Sardinia.
Swedish-born Buffalo Stance singer Neneh Cherry makes her acting debut as Alva, a Swedish architect suffering from debilitating depression following a traumatic traffic accident.
As the first anniversary of the incident approaches, Alva abandons her work to walk the streets of her beloved home city of Stockholm, exploring her past and the event that triggered her depression.
Cherry provides a poetic voiceover and sings five songs for the eclectic soundtrack, which also includes music by Abba co-founder Benny Anderson and 19th-century composer Franz Berwald.
The film sees Cousins collaborate for a second time with legendary cinematographer...
- 10/11/2016
- ScreenDaily
The Holocaust needs to be retold forever, but it's a tough topic to address without distortion or trivialization. André SInger's docu is about the Allied film record of the liberation of the camps -- horrific footage that was used in the war crimes trials and cut into documentaries -- that were then suppressed and locked away. In 2008, an abandoned film supervised by Alfred Hitchcock was finally finished. Night Will Fall DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 2014 / Color / 1:78 enhanced widescreen / 75 min. / Street Date January 27, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Narrators Helena Bonham Carter, Jasper Britton. Cinematography Richard Blanshard Film Editors Arik Lahav, Stephen Miller Original Music Nicolas Singer Written by Lynette Singer Produced by Sally Angel, Brett Ratner <Directed by André Singer
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Documentaries about the Holocaust have always been problematical. In some ways the subject was deemed a cultural taboo, to be discussed in only the gravest terms. For years after the war most Americans saw only chosen snippets of film footage, glimpses of the horrors in the death camps. The images published in magazine photo articles were more than people wanted to see.. There were plenty of exceptions, but most ordinary Americans first saw extended documentary footage in -- of all things -- a for-profit Hollywood picture in which big stars portrayed victims and villains. The movie, Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg was actually in good taste, and had a laudable social purpose. The graphic film from the camp was part of the actual Nuremberg trials, after all. It showed a reality of our times that had been suppressed, whether for questions of taste or decency, or because 'the public couldn't take it.' I believe America accepted 'not seeing' because we were not yet a nation of morbid voyeurs. (Live and learn... from Joe Dante: "Actually I think the first time American audiences were exposed to Death Camp footage was in Welles' The Stranger, long before Judgment at Nuremberg.") Art film viewers saw Alain Resnais' Night and Fog, a quiet, haunting film that avoids emotional sensationalism by telling the story through views of Auschwitz as it was in 1955 and non-confrontational narration. Italians, East Germans, Russians and others eventually made dramatic movies that showed the experiences of various concentration camp victims. Many of these dramas were good, but none could embrace the near-cosmic immensity of the horror. Can any single experience help us to come to grips with the fate of millions? And then there's the problem of the endless footage of corpses -- these formerly taboo images are still too much for sensitive people. The English, the Americans and the Russians all filmed in the camps that they liberated. Night Will Fall tells the story of the 1945 production and then abandonment of a long-form film documentary officially sanctioned by the Allied victors. It was produced by Sidney Bernstein and partly overseen by Alfred Hitchcock. The director developed a script and an approach for a document intended to quash present and future claims that the mass murders were faked, exaggerated or a political illusion. A cut called German Concentration Camps Factual Survey (Gccfs) was prepared up to a certain point, but then shelved, with no go-ahead for a finish. The U.S. Army finally brought in Billy Wilder to supervise a shorter version called Death Mills. But Wilder's film also remained classified, and was not released to the public either. A version of it was shown to German audiences. The docu footage was also projected at the Nuremberg trials, as evidence against the German war criminals. Night Will Fall was announced almost ten years ago, in newspaper articles that explained that the British Imperial War Museum was finally going to complete the original Gccfs. Yet we had already seen much of Gccfs on PBS TV in 1985. All but the last reel of the film was located, in its work print form. It screened at least twice on PBS as Frontline: Memory of the Camps; I taped the second airing on VHS and have a burned DVD of it around somewhere. The 'new' Memory of the Camps was finished in 2014. The Warner Archive Collection's Night Will Fall is a documentary about the making of these movies back at the close of the war. Holocaust survivors, surviving Signal Corps cameramen and the producer of Schindler's List -- himself an Auschwitz survivor - are among the on-camera interviewees. Various personalities including directors Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock are represented by archived interviews on film and audiotape. The details of the liberation and the Signal Corps' activities are certainly interesting. We also want to know about the involvement of Hitchcock and Wilder, although all we get are a few remarks and notes on Hitchcock's concerns with the narrative, in audio bites that I would guess were taken from the famed Hitchcock/Truffaut interviews. Hitchcock asks for the inclusion of panning shots, to help prove that what was seen wasn't being faked. Wilder says much the same thing. When it comes time to explain why the project stalled, we're shown a couple of paragraphs in some documents that suggest that America did not want to antagonize the German population with this negative material. The inference is that with the Cold War heating up, most forms of de-Nazification were abandoned after the obvious death camp villains and high-ranking Nazis were executed or locked away. Washington wanted German cooperation in opposing Stalin, and put a halt to the bringing of many more German war criminals to justice. The Russian attitude was quite different. A Soviet Army cinematographer interviewed for Night Will Fall tells us that when their troops liberated a camp, their first action was to shoot every German guard as soon as they were positively identified. That's sounds okay to me. As I said, the 'finished'1945 film German Concentration Camps Factual Survey was also released in 2014. It retains the title Memory of the Camps and is credited to Sidney Bernstein and Alfred Hitchcock. Night Will Fall ends with a final couple of minutes of the 'finished' Memory. It consists of a semi-poetic narration and an edited sequence showing, in graphic close-up, ten or so victims by the side of the road, presumably executed during the retreat of the camp guards. It's everything the movie shouldn't be, a repetitive series of shock cuts to staring corpses with parts of their heads blown away. I can only compare it to one of the intolerably gory highway safety films that aim only to shock the audience. The brain of one corpse lies in a neat heap alongside a skull blown wide open; another man's head seems to be missing above the nose. I'm not sure what the point is. If it's done to produce a blast of more extreme horror to reach the audience, it's a failure. I must admit that I'm conservative on this issue, as I believe that too much of the audience will compare this real carnage to effects they see in the latest zombie thriller. That sickens me the same way I felt when I witnessed high schoolers on a bus describing the awful 9/11 coverage as, 'really cool.' Night Will Fall has value, but to me its style, making even mild use of editing techniques from today's Reality Programming, is inappropriate. The horror of this reality is blatant, banal even. The most responsible way to use the the horror footage would be to simply lay out the raw takes, with slates and camera stops, like legal evidence. Night Will Fall aestheticizes many shots. In one sequence, close-ups of massed corpses are rendered in negative, turning the horror into stylized 'art.' Fake 'end of reel' blips and flashes are added for style, as in any modern Reality Show, where the only rule is to hype the subject matter using any editorial trick that will keep the frame alive. A s hort piece of footage has been digitally sharpened, and looks as if a sub-par tape source had been run through a bad electronic filter. Is this splitting hairs, and being oversensitive? I suppose that times change and that revisionism happens with everything. But this grim, vitally important history is now leaning toward becoming another entertainment choice. Other snippets of the new 'finished' Memory of the Camps are glimpsed in Night Will Fall. The new film appears to use the same or much of the same narration text. I can't tell if that reconstituted ending was part of the original, because when the original Memory showed on PBS, a card came up informing us that the final 'Auschwitz' chapter had been removed at an earlier date. What remained of the original rough cut ended there. I've always theorized that it was snipped off to be given to documentarians and Stanley Kramer. Many of the standard shots of Auschwitz that we see, often in terrible quality, may have come from that reel. The new Memory of the Camps doesn't retain the original narration, as read by actor Trevor Howard. The original version was unusually eerie and effective because it was just a sequence of raw shots with insert title cards and maps, and the only audio on the soundtrack was Trevor Howard's distinctive voice. It is a very good read. Howard seems to be suppressing his anger all the way through, reading the more ironic comments as if he's personally offended. It's as if the Army Intelligence officer Trevor Howard plays in The Third Man had been asked to record the narration. The new narrator in the finished (2014) clips we see gives a smooth and uninflected read, which to me revises and re-interprets everything. The Holocaust shouldn't need mood music to tell us how to react -- although I realize that that a music track might have been part of the plan in 1945 as well. And it's possible that Hitchcock and Sidney Bernstein, when they heard Trevor Howard's interpretation of the narration script, already knew that they wanted something else. But Howard's track is the one that came from the battlefield of the original production, and should be preserved. I remember buying a copy of a previously classified Army movie about 1950s atom tests, only to find that the original narration had been similarly tossed away and replaced with a new one that sometimes didn't even align with the graphics on screen. This to me makes the movie a censored, worthless revision. Watch William Wyler and John Sturges' docu Thunderbolt on TCM sometime. The Army wasn't keen to show that movie either, and we can tell why -- it's an honest account of how fighter bomber pilots, mostly unopposed in the air, pressed their advantage over retreating Germans in Italy. The narration and the comments by the pilots are bloodthirsty and merciless. Apparently the Army did not like seeing its personnel presented as gleeful killers. Thunderbolt was released only several years after it was finished, by a small studio. Like I said above, I realize that my comments about the style of Night Will Fall are highly subjective and prejudiced. But they are my honest thoughts on the film. The Warner Archive Collection DVD-r of Night Will Fall is a good enhanced encoding of a show that consists of new interviews and the old atrocity documentation footage. The improved quality of the film from the camps spares us nothing. If there are more ways to mangle, burn or abuse a human body, I don't want to know about them. The audio and other technical specs are of a high quality as well. The disc's three extras offer much added value. The first is a lengthy lecture by Professor Rainer Schulze, who re-traces basically the entire subject matter of Night Will Fall on a higher plane, with more detail and information. The lecture answers many questions that the main feature doesn't touch. Schulze also discusses the politics behind the ways the 'hot potato' death camp footage was shown, and then not shown. Frankly, I can see a spokesman like Professor Schulze being excluded from a new 'entertainment' documentary because (a.) he probes deeply into uncomfortable aspects of the subject and (b.) he's a German with a German accent. Want to learn more about this appalling yet essential history lesson? This is a fine study piece. The second and third extras are two shorter concentration camp docus that show how both sides depicted the horror, using much of the same footage. Oświecim (Auschwitz) is the Russian film. It has a Russian title card but English opening and ending text cards -- with a misspelling. It identifies the 'great men' that will insure that the Fascists are brought to justice as Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill -- even though Roosevelt had been dead for a year. The Russian docu refers to the war criminals mostly as Fascists, not Germans, perhaps because they wanted to show the film in the Russian sector of defeated Germany. The narration is fairly specific about what we're seeing, describing the things done to individual prisoners and identifying a number of them by name. Adults and children pose for the camera as Russian doctors examine them. The last film is indeed the Billy Wilder supervised Death Mills, which covers much of the same content. Although it consists mostly of British and American film, it also uses a great deal of Russian footage, with a narration track that says totally different things about some of the victims we see. At one point the narration refers to the brutish-looking female SS guards as Amazons, and says that they are 'Deadlier than the Male.' Is that evidence of Billy Wilder's input? My bias against Night Will Fall is probably a more generalized rant against today's commercial documentaries, many of which are, I think, compromised by the need to compete with other forms of entertainment. The show does have interesting content and may be perfect for someone unfamiliar with the subject. If a viewer wants a show to introduce the subject of Genocide to children, I can't see this or any atrocity footage being the right thing to show them. For others, the excellent extras greatly enhance the film's desirability. On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Night Will Fall DVD-r rates: Movie: Good Video: Very good Sound: Excellent Supplements: One informational lecture short subjects and two short docus made right after the war (see above) Deaf and Hearing Impaired Friendly? Yes; Subtitles: English Packaging: Keep case Reviewed: June 18, 2016 small>(5144fall)
Visit DVD Savant's Main Column Page Glenn Erickson answers most reader mail: dvdsavant@mindspring.com
Text © Copyright 2016 Glenn Erickson...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Documentaries about the Holocaust have always been problematical. In some ways the subject was deemed a cultural taboo, to be discussed in only the gravest terms. For years after the war most Americans saw only chosen snippets of film footage, glimpses of the horrors in the death camps. The images published in magazine photo articles were more than people wanted to see.. There were plenty of exceptions, but most ordinary Americans first saw extended documentary footage in -- of all things -- a for-profit Hollywood picture in which big stars portrayed victims and villains. The movie, Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg was actually in good taste, and had a laudable social purpose. The graphic film from the camp was part of the actual Nuremberg trials, after all. It showed a reality of our times that had been suppressed, whether for questions of taste or decency, or because 'the public couldn't take it.' I believe America accepted 'not seeing' because we were not yet a nation of morbid voyeurs. (Live and learn... from Joe Dante: "Actually I think the first time American audiences were exposed to Death Camp footage was in Welles' The Stranger, long before Judgment at Nuremberg.") Art film viewers saw Alain Resnais' Night and Fog, a quiet, haunting film that avoids emotional sensationalism by telling the story through views of Auschwitz as it was in 1955 and non-confrontational narration. Italians, East Germans, Russians and others eventually made dramatic movies that showed the experiences of various concentration camp victims. Many of these dramas were good, but none could embrace the near-cosmic immensity of the horror. Can any single experience help us to come to grips with the fate of millions? And then there's the problem of the endless footage of corpses -- these formerly taboo images are still too much for sensitive people. The English, the Americans and the Russians all filmed in the camps that they liberated. Night Will Fall tells the story of the 1945 production and then abandonment of a long-form film documentary officially sanctioned by the Allied victors. It was produced by Sidney Bernstein and partly overseen by Alfred Hitchcock. The director developed a script and an approach for a document intended to quash present and future claims that the mass murders were faked, exaggerated or a political illusion. A cut called German Concentration Camps Factual Survey (Gccfs) was prepared up to a certain point, but then shelved, with no go-ahead for a finish. The U.S. Army finally brought in Billy Wilder to supervise a shorter version called Death Mills. But Wilder's film also remained classified, and was not released to the public either. A version of it was shown to German audiences. The docu footage was also projected at the Nuremberg trials, as evidence against the German war criminals. Night Will Fall was announced almost ten years ago, in newspaper articles that explained that the British Imperial War Museum was finally going to complete the original Gccfs. Yet we had already seen much of Gccfs on PBS TV in 1985. All but the last reel of the film was located, in its work print form. It screened at least twice on PBS as Frontline: Memory of the Camps; I taped the second airing on VHS and have a burned DVD of it around somewhere. The 'new' Memory of the Camps was finished in 2014. The Warner Archive Collection's Night Will Fall is a documentary about the making of these movies back at the close of the war. Holocaust survivors, surviving Signal Corps cameramen and the producer of Schindler's List -- himself an Auschwitz survivor - are among the on-camera interviewees. Various personalities including directors Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock are represented by archived interviews on film and audiotape. The details of the liberation and the Signal Corps' activities are certainly interesting. We also want to know about the involvement of Hitchcock and Wilder, although all we get are a few remarks and notes on Hitchcock's concerns with the narrative, in audio bites that I would guess were taken from the famed Hitchcock/Truffaut interviews. Hitchcock asks for the inclusion of panning shots, to help prove that what was seen wasn't being faked. Wilder says much the same thing. When it comes time to explain why the project stalled, we're shown a couple of paragraphs in some documents that suggest that America did not want to antagonize the German population with this negative material. The inference is that with the Cold War heating up, most forms of de-Nazification were abandoned after the obvious death camp villains and high-ranking Nazis were executed or locked away. Washington wanted German cooperation in opposing Stalin, and put a halt to the bringing of many more German war criminals to justice. The Russian attitude was quite different. A Soviet Army cinematographer interviewed for Night Will Fall tells us that when their troops liberated a camp, their first action was to shoot every German guard as soon as they were positively identified. That's sounds okay to me. As I said, the 'finished'1945 film German Concentration Camps Factual Survey was also released in 2014. It retains the title Memory of the Camps and is credited to Sidney Bernstein and Alfred Hitchcock. Night Will Fall ends with a final couple of minutes of the 'finished' Memory. It consists of a semi-poetic narration and an edited sequence showing, in graphic close-up, ten or so victims by the side of the road, presumably executed during the retreat of the camp guards. It's everything the movie shouldn't be, a repetitive series of shock cuts to staring corpses with parts of their heads blown away. I can only compare it to one of the intolerably gory highway safety films that aim only to shock the audience. The brain of one corpse lies in a neat heap alongside a skull blown wide open; another man's head seems to be missing above the nose. I'm not sure what the point is. If it's done to produce a blast of more extreme horror to reach the audience, it's a failure. I must admit that I'm conservative on this issue, as I believe that too much of the audience will compare this real carnage to effects they see in the latest zombie thriller. That sickens me the same way I felt when I witnessed high schoolers on a bus describing the awful 9/11 coverage as, 'really cool.' Night Will Fall has value, but to me its style, making even mild use of editing techniques from today's Reality Programming, is inappropriate. The horror of this reality is blatant, banal even. The most responsible way to use the the horror footage would be to simply lay out the raw takes, with slates and camera stops, like legal evidence. Night Will Fall aestheticizes many shots. In one sequence, close-ups of massed corpses are rendered in negative, turning the horror into stylized 'art.' Fake 'end of reel' blips and flashes are added for style, as in any modern Reality Show, where the only rule is to hype the subject matter using any editorial trick that will keep the frame alive. A s hort piece of footage has been digitally sharpened, and looks as if a sub-par tape source had been run through a bad electronic filter. Is this splitting hairs, and being oversensitive? I suppose that times change and that revisionism happens with everything. But this grim, vitally important history is now leaning toward becoming another entertainment choice. Other snippets of the new 'finished' Memory of the Camps are glimpsed in Night Will Fall. The new film appears to use the same or much of the same narration text. I can't tell if that reconstituted ending was part of the original, because when the original Memory showed on PBS, a card came up informing us that the final 'Auschwitz' chapter had been removed at an earlier date. What remained of the original rough cut ended there. I've always theorized that it was snipped off to be given to documentarians and Stanley Kramer. Many of the standard shots of Auschwitz that we see, often in terrible quality, may have come from that reel. The new Memory of the Camps doesn't retain the original narration, as read by actor Trevor Howard. The original version was unusually eerie and effective because it was just a sequence of raw shots with insert title cards and maps, and the only audio on the soundtrack was Trevor Howard's distinctive voice. It is a very good read. Howard seems to be suppressing his anger all the way through, reading the more ironic comments as if he's personally offended. It's as if the Army Intelligence officer Trevor Howard plays in The Third Man had been asked to record the narration. The new narrator in the finished (2014) clips we see gives a smooth and uninflected read, which to me revises and re-interprets everything. The Holocaust shouldn't need mood music to tell us how to react -- although I realize that that a music track might have been part of the plan in 1945 as well. And it's possible that Hitchcock and Sidney Bernstein, when they heard Trevor Howard's interpretation of the narration script, already knew that they wanted something else. But Howard's track is the one that came from the battlefield of the original production, and should be preserved. I remember buying a copy of a previously classified Army movie about 1950s atom tests, only to find that the original narration had been similarly tossed away and replaced with a new one that sometimes didn't even align with the graphics on screen. This to me makes the movie a censored, worthless revision. Watch William Wyler and John Sturges' docu Thunderbolt on TCM sometime. The Army wasn't keen to show that movie either, and we can tell why -- it's an honest account of how fighter bomber pilots, mostly unopposed in the air, pressed their advantage over retreating Germans in Italy. The narration and the comments by the pilots are bloodthirsty and merciless. Apparently the Army did not like seeing its personnel presented as gleeful killers. Thunderbolt was released only several years after it was finished, by a small studio. Like I said above, I realize that my comments about the style of Night Will Fall are highly subjective and prejudiced. But they are my honest thoughts on the film. The Warner Archive Collection DVD-r of Night Will Fall is a good enhanced encoding of a show that consists of new interviews and the old atrocity documentation footage. The improved quality of the film from the camps spares us nothing. If there are more ways to mangle, burn or abuse a human body, I don't want to know about them. The audio and other technical specs are of a high quality as well. The disc's three extras offer much added value. The first is a lengthy lecture by Professor Rainer Schulze, who re-traces basically the entire subject matter of Night Will Fall on a higher plane, with more detail and information. The lecture answers many questions that the main feature doesn't touch. Schulze also discusses the politics behind the ways the 'hot potato' death camp footage was shown, and then not shown. Frankly, I can see a spokesman like Professor Schulze being excluded from a new 'entertainment' documentary because (a.) he probes deeply into uncomfortable aspects of the subject and (b.) he's a German with a German accent. Want to learn more about this appalling yet essential history lesson? This is a fine study piece. The second and third extras are two shorter concentration camp docus that show how both sides depicted the horror, using much of the same footage. Oświecim (Auschwitz) is the Russian film. It has a Russian title card but English opening and ending text cards -- with a misspelling. It identifies the 'great men' that will insure that the Fascists are brought to justice as Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill -- even though Roosevelt had been dead for a year. The Russian docu refers to the war criminals mostly as Fascists, not Germans, perhaps because they wanted to show the film in the Russian sector of defeated Germany. The narration is fairly specific about what we're seeing, describing the things done to individual prisoners and identifying a number of them by name. Adults and children pose for the camera as Russian doctors examine them. The last film is indeed the Billy Wilder supervised Death Mills, which covers much of the same content. Although it consists mostly of British and American film, it also uses a great deal of Russian footage, with a narration track that says totally different things about some of the victims we see. At one point the narration refers to the brutish-looking female SS guards as Amazons, and says that they are 'Deadlier than the Male.' Is that evidence of Billy Wilder's input? My bias against Night Will Fall is probably a more generalized rant against today's commercial documentaries, many of which are, I think, compromised by the need to compete with other forms of entertainment. The show does have interesting content and may be perfect for someone unfamiliar with the subject. If a viewer wants a show to introduce the subject of Genocide to children, I can't see this or any atrocity footage being the right thing to show them. For others, the excellent extras greatly enhance the film's desirability. On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Night Will Fall DVD-r rates: Movie: Good Video: Very good Sound: Excellent Supplements: One informational lecture short subjects and two short docus made right after the war (see above) Deaf and Hearing Impaired Friendly? Yes; Subtitles: English Packaging: Keep case Reviewed: June 18, 2016 small>(5144fall)
Visit DVD Savant's Main Column Page Glenn Erickson answers most reader mail: dvdsavant@mindspring.com
Text © Copyright 2016 Glenn Erickson...
- 6/21/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Documentary from Australian war artist George Gittoes centres on street kids in Afghanistan.
Tel Aviv-based sales company Cinephil has acquired the worldwide right to George Gittoes’ Snow Monkey ahead of its international premiere in competition at Idfa (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) (Nov 18-29).
The film is a portrait of daily life in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where art activist Gittoes recruited gangs of war-damaged children to shoot local, Pashto-style films - vibrant, colorful and infused with the violence they experience on a daily basis.
Gittoes will return to Idfa, which runs Nov 18-29, having previously screened Miscreants of Taliwood, shot in Peshawar with Taliban-besieged filmmakers, some of which have helped create Snow Monkey.
Cinephil MD Philippa Kowarsky negotiated the deal with producers Gittoes and Lizzette Atkins of Unicorn Films.
Executive producers are Norway’s Torstein Grude and Bjarte Mørner Tveit for Piraya Film.
Kowarsky said the film “offers an unprecedented understanding of the lives of the people of Jalalabad...
Tel Aviv-based sales company Cinephil has acquired the worldwide right to George Gittoes’ Snow Monkey ahead of its international premiere in competition at Idfa (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) (Nov 18-29).
The film is a portrait of daily life in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where art activist Gittoes recruited gangs of war-damaged children to shoot local, Pashto-style films - vibrant, colorful and infused with the violence they experience on a daily basis.
Gittoes will return to Idfa, which runs Nov 18-29, having previously screened Miscreants of Taliwood, shot in Peshawar with Taliban-besieged filmmakers, some of which have helped create Snow Monkey.
Cinephil MD Philippa Kowarsky negotiated the deal with producers Gittoes and Lizzette Atkins of Unicorn Films.
Executive producers are Norway’s Torstein Grude and Bjarte Mørner Tveit for Piraya Film.
Kowarsky said the film “offers an unprecedented understanding of the lives of the people of Jalalabad...
- 11/10/2015
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
It’s been a couple months since the last edition of What’s Up Doc? placed Michael Moore’s surprise world premiere of Where To Invade Next at the top of this list and in the meantime much shuffling has taken place and much time has been spent on various new endeavors (namely my Buffalo-based film series, Cultivate Cinema Circle). Finally taking its rightful place at the top, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hagedus’ Unlocking the Cage is in the midst of being scored by composer James Lavino, according to Lavino’s own personal site. Though the project has been taking shape at its own leisurely pace, I’d expect to see the film making its festival debut in early 2016.
Right behind, the American direct cinema masters is a Texan soon to make his non-fiction debut with Voyage of Time. Just two weeks ago indieWIRE reported that Ennio Morricone, who scored...
Right behind, the American direct cinema masters is a Texan soon to make his non-fiction debut with Voyage of Time. Just two weeks ago indieWIRE reported that Ennio Morricone, who scored...
- 11/5/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Two strong British programmes are running at top Mexican film festivals this month.
Mexico City documentary festival Docs Df (Oct 15-24) hosts the second leg of the Docunexion programme that British Council is running in partnership with Imcine, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Docs Df and Ambulante.
This training and mentorship initiative for emerging documentary makers from the UK and Mexico is delivered as part of the 2015 UK-Mexico year of exchange.
Jerry Rothwell, André Singer and Jo Lapping from the UK will give further dedicated development support to participants alongside three Mexican mentors. The programme culminates in a pitching session in front of international decision makers.
Claire Aguilar, programming director at Sheffield Doc/Fest, and Britdoc Foundation’s Luke Moody will attend as jury members alongside Julien Temple who will deliver a masterclass to accompany screenings of his films The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, Oil City Confidential and The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson.
The programme...
Mexico City documentary festival Docs Df (Oct 15-24) hosts the second leg of the Docunexion programme that British Council is running in partnership with Imcine, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Docs Df and Ambulante.
This training and mentorship initiative for emerging documentary makers from the UK and Mexico is delivered as part of the 2015 UK-Mexico year of exchange.
Jerry Rothwell, André Singer and Jo Lapping from the UK will give further dedicated development support to participants alongside three Mexican mentors. The programme culminates in a pitching session in front of international decision makers.
Claire Aguilar, programming director at Sheffield Doc/Fest, and Britdoc Foundation’s Luke Moody will attend as jury members alongside Julien Temple who will deliver a masterclass to accompany screenings of his films The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, Oil City Confidential and The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson.
The programme...
- 10/19/2015
- ScreenDaily
Teaser clip of Herzog’s documentary about the relationship between humans and volcanoes to be screened at Cannes.
London-based Dogwoof has acquired worldwide rights to Werner Herzog’s long-gestating volcano documentary Into The Inferno. A teaser clip of the film, in pre-production, will be screened by Dogwoof to buyers as part of their Cannes Marche promo reel on May 15.
Herzog, whose documentary films include Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams, will explore why, where and how human civilization is inextricably linked with volcanoes. Filmed around the world, Herzog will team up with volcanologist Professor Clive Oppenheimer to tell the story of the relationship between volcanoes, our planet and human society.
Dogwoof head of distribution Oli Harbottle negotiated the deal with André Singer and Richard Melman of Spring Films, the UK co-producer (in association with co-producers Herzog Film and Matter of Fact Media), for Dogwoof to handle the sale of all international rights, excluding Canada...
London-based Dogwoof has acquired worldwide rights to Werner Herzog’s long-gestating volcano documentary Into The Inferno. A teaser clip of the film, in pre-production, will be screened by Dogwoof to buyers as part of their Cannes Marche promo reel on May 15.
Herzog, whose documentary films include Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams, will explore why, where and how human civilization is inextricably linked with volcanoes. Filmed around the world, Herzog will team up with volcanologist Professor Clive Oppenheimer to tell the story of the relationship between volcanoes, our planet and human society.
Dogwoof head of distribution Oli Harbottle negotiated the deal with André Singer and Richard Melman of Spring Films, the UK co-producer (in association with co-producers Herzog Film and Matter of Fact Media), for Dogwoof to handle the sale of all international rights, excluding Canada...
- 5/6/2015
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
British Council is partnering with Mexican national film body Imcine, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Docs Df and Ambulante to create Docunexion, a two-stage feature documentary training and mentorship programme.
There will be three producer-director teams from the UK and three teams from Mexico selected to attend the Docunexion sessions, which will be held in Sheffield in June and in Mexico City in October.
Applications are due by Friday April 10 and further details are available here http://docunexion.org/uk-mx/ .
Leading industry professionals from each country will serve as mentors. UK mentors already confirmed include BBC Storyville executive producerKate Townsend and Andre Singer, executive producer on Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing and Carol Morley’s Dreams of a Life.
They will help the emerging documentary filmmaking teams with conceptual development of feature-length documentaries, to help them attract interest of funders, distributors and festivals.
Will Massa, senior programme manager for film at British Council said: “We are really...
There will be three producer-director teams from the UK and three teams from Mexico selected to attend the Docunexion sessions, which will be held in Sheffield in June and in Mexico City in October.
Applications are due by Friday April 10 and further details are available here http://docunexion.org/uk-mx/ .
Leading industry professionals from each country will serve as mentors. UK mentors already confirmed include BBC Storyville executive producerKate Townsend and Andre Singer, executive producer on Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing and Carol Morley’s Dreams of a Life.
They will help the emerging documentary filmmaking teams with conceptual development of feature-length documentaries, to help them attract interest of funders, distributors and festivals.
Will Massa, senior programme manager for film at British Council said: “We are really...
- 4/2/2015
- ScreenDaily
Pre-sales down 40% following shootings in the Danish capital less than two weeks ago.
Pre-sales for the 9th Copenhagen Jewish Film Festival are down 40% on last year in the wake of the shooting in the Danish capital on Feb 14, which left two people dead - including Danish director-producer Finn Nørgaard - and five police officers wounded.
“People are scared,” festival director Anne Boukris told Danish television TV2 News. “All the time people are asking me about security – after what happened in Copenhagen, they are anxious about what is going to happen next.”
The festival launches tonight and runs till March 21 with a programme comprising 24 international films with Jewish themes, held atthe Cinemateket at Copenhagen’s Film House.
“I am sure people are scared to come,” added Boukris.
The festival will open with Golden Globe-nominated Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsalem from Israeli directors Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz, introduced by Danish member of Parliament Özlem Cekic.
Cjff will also...
Pre-sales for the 9th Copenhagen Jewish Film Festival are down 40% on last year in the wake of the shooting in the Danish capital on Feb 14, which left two people dead - including Danish director-producer Finn Nørgaard - and five police officers wounded.
“People are scared,” festival director Anne Boukris told Danish television TV2 News. “All the time people are asking me about security – after what happened in Copenhagen, they are anxious about what is going to happen next.”
The festival launches tonight and runs till March 21 with a programme comprising 24 international films with Jewish themes, held atthe Cinemateket at Copenhagen’s Film House.
“I am sure people are scared to come,” added Boukris.
The festival will open with Golden Globe-nominated Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsalem from Israeli directors Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz, introduced by Danish member of Parliament Özlem Cekic.
Cjff will also...
- 2/25/2015
- by jornrossing@aol.com (Jorn Rossing Jensen)
- ScreenDaily
Pre-sales down 40% following shootings in the Danish capital less than two weeks ago.
Pre-sales for the 9th Copenhagen Jewish Film Festival are down 40% on last year in the wake of the shooting in the Danish capital on Feb 14, which left two people dead - including Danish director-producer Finn Nørgaard - and five police officers wounded.
“People are scared,” festival director Anne Boukris told Danish television TV2 News. “All the time people are asking me about security – after what happened in Copenhagen, they are anxious about what is going to happen next.”
The festival launches tonight and runs till March 21 with a programme comprising 24 international films with Jewish themes, held atthe Cinemateket at Copenhagen’s Film House.
“I am sure people are scared to come,” added Boukris.
The festival will open with Golden Globe-nominated Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsalem from Israeli directors Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz, introduced by Danish member of Parliament Özlem Cekic.
Cjff will also...
Pre-sales for the 9th Copenhagen Jewish Film Festival are down 40% on last year in the wake of the shooting in the Danish capital on Feb 14, which left two people dead - including Danish director-producer Finn Nørgaard - and five police officers wounded.
“People are scared,” festival director Anne Boukris told Danish television TV2 News. “All the time people are asking me about security – after what happened in Copenhagen, they are anxious about what is going to happen next.”
The festival launches tonight and runs till March 21 with a programme comprising 24 international films with Jewish themes, held atthe Cinemateket at Copenhagen’s Film House.
“I am sure people are scared to come,” added Boukris.
The festival will open with Golden Globe-nominated Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsalem from Israeli directors Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz, introduced by Danish member of Parliament Özlem Cekic.
Cjff will also...
- 2/25/2015
- by jornrossing@aol.com (Jorn Rossing Jensen)
- ScreenDaily
Image Courtesy of Newsweek
Alfred Hitchcock made films in which birds attacked mankind, in which a psychopath killed women in the shower, and in which a man holed up in his room could witness a murder about to unfold. Yet his most disturbing film was never seen by the public and has been buried for 70 years.
In 1945, Hitchcock was commissioned to make German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, a documentary to be filmed at the Bergen-Bensen concentration camp during the Holocaust at the end of World War II. Hitchcock and a crew of filmmakers captured unspeakable horrors at the hands of the Nazis. But for a variety of reasons, in part because Billy Wilder was commissioned to make another film, in part because diplomacy was moving forward and in part because the footage was so gruesome, that Hitchcock’s work was buried and unfinished.
Now Director Andre Singer, along with producer Brett Ratner,...
Alfred Hitchcock made films in which birds attacked mankind, in which a psychopath killed women in the shower, and in which a man holed up in his room could witness a murder about to unfold. Yet his most disturbing film was never seen by the public and has been buried for 70 years.
In 1945, Hitchcock was commissioned to make German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, a documentary to be filmed at the Bergen-Bensen concentration camp during the Holocaust at the end of World War II. Hitchcock and a crew of filmmakers captured unspeakable horrors at the hands of the Nazis. But for a variety of reasons, in part because Billy Wilder was commissioned to make another film, in part because diplomacy was moving forward and in part because the footage was so gruesome, that Hitchcock’s work was buried and unfinished.
Now Director Andre Singer, along with producer Brett Ratner,...
- 1/21/2015
- by Brian Welk
- SoundOnSight
In 1945, British Allied Forces commissioned director Alfred Hitchcock (circa "Spellbound" era) to supervise a documentary on the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. Titled "German Concentration Camps: Factual Survey," the project foundered under political and artistic pressures. Thus, enter producer Brett Ratner and director André Singer, whose "Night Will Fall" plays HBO on Monday, January 26 at 9pm Est. Watch trailers and clips below. The presentation combines restored, hardly seen archival footage (including pieces of an elusive sixth reel thought to be lost) and eyewitness testimony to offer an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at a film that was never finished. (An incomplete version played the Berlin Film Festival in 1984, and PBS in 1985, under the title "Memory of the Camps.") Newsweek has a fascinating, in-depth look at what went wrong and what this footage looks like: "Two women drag an emaciated female corpse...
- 1/20/2015
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
London Critics’ Circle reveal top 10 films of 2014. Scroll down for full list of winners
The UK’s top film critics named Boyhood as Film of the Year at their annual ceremony last night, hosted by previous winners and Sightseers stars Alice Lowe and Steve Oram at London’s May Fair Hotel.
In addition to Film, Boyhood also won Director for Richard Linklater and Supporting Actress for Patricia Arquette.
Actress Miranda Richardson was presented with the Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film by actor Stanley Tucci.
The evening’s other big winner was Under the Skin, for which Jonathan Glazer was on hand to collect the Attenborough Award for British Film of the Year, and composer Mica Levi accepted the Technical Achievement Award for her score.
Oscar-nominated producers Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky were present to receive Documentary of the Year for Citizenfour.
Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev accepted his Foreign-language Film prize for Leviathan by video.
Other...
The UK’s top film critics named Boyhood as Film of the Year at their annual ceremony last night, hosted by previous winners and Sightseers stars Alice Lowe and Steve Oram at London’s May Fair Hotel.
In addition to Film, Boyhood also won Director for Richard Linklater and Supporting Actress for Patricia Arquette.
Actress Miranda Richardson was presented with the Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film by actor Stanley Tucci.
The evening’s other big winner was Under the Skin, for which Jonathan Glazer was on hand to collect the Attenborough Award for British Film of the Year, and composer Mica Levi accepted the Technical Achievement Award for her score.
Oscar-nominated producers Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky were present to receive Documentary of the Year for Citizenfour.
Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev accepted his Foreign-language Film prize for Leviathan by video.
Other...
- 1/19/2015
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
With year end lists already flooding the interwebs a full month before the actual year’s end, its hard to ignore the fact that awards season is now in full swing. Tons of documentary awards have already been handed out, whether its for Ida (not Pawel Pawlikowski’s gorgeous new film) or for Cinema Eye Honors, there are plenty of worthy films getting their due recognition. Plus, several international festivals have handed out major awards this month, including Idfa, which hosted their awards ceremony just minutes ago. The full roundup is just below:
Dok Leipzig – Germany – October 27th – November 2nd
At the close of the 57th edition of the German documentary festival the Golden Dove Award, the festival’s highest honor, was given to Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard’s Rules of the Game, while the Leipziger Ring Film Prize went to Laura Poitras’s Edward Snowden doc Citizenfour, the...
Dok Leipzig – Germany – October 27th – November 2nd
At the close of the 57th edition of the German documentary festival the Golden Dove Award, the festival’s highest honor, was given to Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard’s Rules of the Game, while the Leipziger Ring Film Prize went to Laura Poitras’s Edward Snowden doc Citizenfour, the...
- 11/29/2014
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Andre Singer’s Night Will Fall will get a global broadcast launch on Jan 27, to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The date is also International Holocause Remembrance Day.
The film revisits the project from decades ago that involved Sidney Bernstein, Richard Crossman and Alfred Hitchcock to tell the story of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps; footage from 1945 is used extensively.
The harrowing documentary will be shown on Channel 4 (UK), HBO (Us), Arte (Germany/France), Ard (Germany), Tvp (Poland), Vpro (The Netherlands), Channel 8 Hot and Keshet TV (Israel), Dr (Denmark), Rtvslo (Slovenia), Yle (Finland), and Nrk (Norway). Midas will distribute in Portugal.
Tel Aviv-based Cinephil handles international sales.
Producers are Sally Angel and Brett Ratner and executive producers are Richard Melman, James Packer and Stephen Frears.
The 75-minute film is a UK-us-Israel-Denmark production.
Night Will Fall had a work in progress screening at the 2014 Berlinale.
The date is also International Holocause Remembrance Day.
The film revisits the project from decades ago that involved Sidney Bernstein, Richard Crossman and Alfred Hitchcock to tell the story of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps; footage from 1945 is used extensively.
The harrowing documentary will be shown on Channel 4 (UK), HBO (Us), Arte (Germany/France), Ard (Germany), Tvp (Poland), Vpro (The Netherlands), Channel 8 Hot and Keshet TV (Israel), Dr (Denmark), Rtvslo (Slovenia), Yle (Finland), and Nrk (Norway). Midas will distribute in Portugal.
Tel Aviv-based Cinephil handles international sales.
Producers are Sally Angel and Brett Ratner and executive producers are Richard Melman, James Packer and Stephen Frears.
The 75-minute film is a UK-us-Israel-Denmark production.
Night Will Fall had a work in progress screening at the 2014 Berlinale.
- 11/25/2014
- by wendy.mitchell@screendaily.com (Wendy Mitchell)
- ScreenDaily
★★★★☆A conflict rich in inhumane horrors, it was the discovery of Nazi concentration camps by Allied forces as the battle in the European arena drew to its conclusion that remains most potent to this day. In Night Will Fall (2014), directed by The Act of Killing (2012) producer André Singer, we're provided with a harrowing but necessary insight into what the first Allied troops met as they stumbled upon the nightmare of the Holocaust. Though comparisons will be drawn with Joshua Oppenheimer's own exploration of the machinations behind mass genocide, Singer focuses not on the culprits or victims but the photographic units that found themselves charged with documenting one of the darkest moments in human history.
- 9/20/2014
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
At the risk of sounding morbid, the further away we move from the Second World War, the less people there are who remain to talk about it. It’s therefore incredibly important, for mere posterity, that we capture these soldiers and survivors and hear their first hand accounts of the horrors that occurred, as Andre Singer – fresh off the back of his producing role on the Oscar nominated The Act of Killing, takes a seat in the director’s chair for the first time this side of the millennium, with the harrowing documentary Night Will Fall.
Singer studies a lost documentary made by Sidney Bernstein (with the help of Alfred Hitchcock), which documents and explores life in a German concentration camp in 1945, exposing footage from the tapes (complete with original narration), with present day interviews with those who were involved at the time.
The widely known figure of six million...
Singer studies a lost documentary made by Sidney Bernstein (with the help of Alfred Hitchcock), which documents and explores life in a German concentration camp in 1945, exposing footage from the tapes (complete with original narration), with present day interviews with those who were involved at the time.
The widely known figure of six million...
- 9/16/2014
- by Stefan Pape
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Want to know what British films are coming out this month? Then look no further than our fabulous movie calendar...
Welcome to our new, regularly updated calendar of all the British movies due for release in UK cinemas over the coming months. So if you're keen to keep up-to-date on the latest in home grown cinema - from documentaries to dramas, and comedy horror to science fiction - this is the ideal post for you.
So here's what's coming up in the future.
12 September 2014
Pride
Director: Matthew Warchus
Cast: Bill Nighy, Dominic West, Andrew Scott
Details: A drama about a group of gay and lesbian activists donating to people in need during the 1984 miners' strike.
Jack To A King - The Swansea Story
Director: Marc Evans
Cast: Tbc
Details: A documentary about Swansea football fans.
19 September 2014
Night Will Fall
Director: Andre Singer
Cast: Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Bernstein
Details: A documentary...
Welcome to our new, regularly updated calendar of all the British movies due for release in UK cinemas over the coming months. So if you're keen to keep up-to-date on the latest in home grown cinema - from documentaries to dramas, and comedy horror to science fiction - this is the ideal post for you.
So here's what's coming up in the future.
12 September 2014
Pride
Director: Matthew Warchus
Cast: Bill Nighy, Dominic West, Andrew Scott
Details: A drama about a group of gay and lesbian activists donating to people in need during the 1984 miners' strike.
Jack To A King - The Swansea Story
Director: Marc Evans
Cast: Tbc
Details: A documentary about Swansea football fans.
19 September 2014
Night Will Fall
Director: Andre Singer
Cast: Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Bernstein
Details: A documentary...
- 9/12/2014
- by sarahd
- Den of Geek
Exclusive: UK deal for The Act of Killing follow-up.
UK distributor Dogwoof has snapped up rights to Joshua Oppenheimer’s well-received documentary The Look of Silence.
The deal was brokered by Oli Harbottle of Dogwoof with Philippa Kowarsky of Cinephil.
The companion piece to Oppenheimer’s lauded BAFTA-winning documentary The Act of Killing follows an Indonesian family that discovers how their son was murdered during the Indonesian genocide and who killed him.
The film screened to acclaim in Venice and Telluride last month and shows in Toronto next week.
Signe Byrge Sørensen produces. Executive producers are Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and André Singer.
Dogwoof will release in 2015.
“Joshua has once again delivered a powerful reminder of the fragility of the human condition”, Harbottle told Screen. “We are looking not only to replicate the astonishing success of the previous film but to top it with some big and exciting plans already in place for the UK release.”
Distributor...
UK distributor Dogwoof has snapped up rights to Joshua Oppenheimer’s well-received documentary The Look of Silence.
The deal was brokered by Oli Harbottle of Dogwoof with Philippa Kowarsky of Cinephil.
The companion piece to Oppenheimer’s lauded BAFTA-winning documentary The Act of Killing follows an Indonesian family that discovers how their son was murdered during the Indonesian genocide and who killed him.
The film screened to acclaim in Venice and Telluride last month and shows in Toronto next week.
Signe Byrge Sørensen produces. Executive producers are Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and André Singer.
Dogwoof will release in 2015.
“Joshua has once again delivered a powerful reminder of the fragility of the human condition”, Harbottle told Screen. “We are looking not only to replicate the astonishing success of the previous film but to top it with some big and exciting plans already in place for the UK release.”
Distributor...
- 9/5/2014
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
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