Salaud Morisset, the Paris- and Berlin-based sales and production outfit, has closed deals on “Excursion,” Una Gunjak’s feature debut which won the Jury Special Mention at the Locarno Film Festival.
Salaud Morisset, which also co-produced “Excursion,” has closed sales deals with Angel Films (Denmark), Filmin (Spain), Zero em Comportamento (Portugal), Access Cinema (Ireland), JUNO11 Distribution (Hungary), Hakka Distribution (Tunisia), Fivia (Slovenia), McF MegaCom (Montenegro & North Macedonia), No Blink Film (Bulgaria) and Silver Screen (Romania).
The banner will pursue sales on the film at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous showcase this week and is already in advanced negotiations to secure deals for the U.K., Germany and Benelux.
Zagreb Film Festival will release the film in Croatia, and Obala Art Centar will distribute in Bosnia. Previously announced deals include France (Jhr Films) and Sweden (Buff Distribution), as well as a multi-territory, SVOD/Pay-tv deal with HBO Europe for Central and Eastern Europe.
Salaud Morisset, which also co-produced “Excursion,” has closed sales deals with Angel Films (Denmark), Filmin (Spain), Zero em Comportamento (Portugal), Access Cinema (Ireland), JUNO11 Distribution (Hungary), Hakka Distribution (Tunisia), Fivia (Slovenia), McF MegaCom (Montenegro & North Macedonia), No Blink Film (Bulgaria) and Silver Screen (Romania).
The banner will pursue sales on the film at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous showcase this week and is already in advanced negotiations to secure deals for the U.K., Germany and Benelux.
Zagreb Film Festival will release the film in Croatia, and Obala Art Centar will distribute in Bosnia. Previously announced deals include France (Jhr Films) and Sweden (Buff Distribution), as well as a multi-territory, SVOD/Pay-tv deal with HBO Europe for Central and Eastern Europe.
- 1/17/2024
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Variety has been given exclusive access to the trailer for Una Gunjak’s debut feature “Excursion,” which is Bosnia and Herzegovina’s entry for the Oscars’ international feature film category. Salaud Morisset is handling international sales.
HBO Europe has just picked up the SVOD and pay TV rights to the movie in 15 countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
“Excursion” received a special mention from the Filmmakers of the Present jury of the Locarno Film Festival, and was selected to play at 30 festivals. It has been selected for the European Film Awards shortlist.
The film looks at how young people’s approach to love and intimacy is influenced by their peer group. The film centers on Iman, a teenager who is seeking validation and who claims she had sex for the first time during a game of “truth or dare” among middle schoolers. What ensues is a web of lies – including...
HBO Europe has just picked up the SVOD and pay TV rights to the movie in 15 countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
“Excursion” received a special mention from the Filmmakers of the Present jury of the Locarno Film Festival, and was selected to play at 30 festivals. It has been selected for the European Film Awards shortlist.
The film looks at how young people’s approach to love and intimacy is influenced by their peer group. The film centers on Iman, a teenager who is seeking validation and who claims she had sex for the first time during a game of “truth or dare” among middle schoolers. What ensues is a web of lies – including...
- 10/19/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Following her award-winning short “The Chicken,” Bosnian director Una Gunjak is back in the director’s seat with her debut feature, “Excursion.”
The film centers on Iman, a teenager who is seeking validation and who reveals she had sex for the first time during a game of “truth or dare” among middle schoolers. What ensues is a web of lies – including one involving her own pregnancy – that ends in an out-of-control controversy. The film plays in Competition at the Sarajevo Film Festival after having nabbed a Special Mention in Locarno.
The idea for “Excursion” came to Gunjak after reading an article in the local press. A few years ago, a scandal shook Bosnia after seven out of 13 school girls came home pregnant after an end of year school trip.
“The reason why it caught my attention is that it was everywhere,” she says. “What really struck me straightaway was that...
The film centers on Iman, a teenager who is seeking validation and who reveals she had sex for the first time during a game of “truth or dare” among middle schoolers. What ensues is a web of lies – including one involving her own pregnancy – that ends in an out-of-control controversy. The film plays in Competition at the Sarajevo Film Festival after having nabbed a Special Mention in Locarno.
The idea for “Excursion” came to Gunjak after reading an article in the local press. A few years ago, a scandal shook Bosnia after seven out of 13 school girls came home pregnant after an end of year school trip.
“The reason why it caught my attention is that it was everywhere,” she says. “What really struck me straightaway was that...
- 8/18/2023
- by Tara Karajica
- Variety Film + TV
In her sophomore feature, contemporary fairytale “Rift in the Ice,” Serbian director Maja Miloš revisits the underbelly of Serbian society and explores women’s integrity and sexuality in the harsh reality of contemporary Serbia. The film is a co-production between Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Netherlands and Montenegro, and features in the works-in-progress section of Cinelink, the Sarajevo Film Festival’s industry program. It is hoping to woo partners and funds for completion.
Miloš explains that “Rift in the Ice” is a Cinderella story set in Serbia in the period following the Balkans War, and posits the idea that when a young woman embraces her sexuality she becomes a kind of princess. “It is also a hero’s journey going from the lowest ranks of society to the highest.“
The ice in the title refers to the background of the protagonist, an ice skater. “I wanted her to be in sports...
Miloš explains that “Rift in the Ice” is a Cinderella story set in Serbia in the period following the Balkans War, and posits the idea that when a young woman embraces her sexuality she becomes a kind of princess. “It is also a hero’s journey going from the lowest ranks of society to the highest.“
The ice in the title refers to the background of the protagonist, an ice skater. “I wanted her to be in sports...
- 8/13/2023
- by Tara Karajica
- Variety Film + TV
While international co-productions have for years been trending upwards across much of Europe, the coronavirus pandemic has forced many of the continent’s producers to rethink how they finance and shoot in an era of uncertainty. With government support schemes varying from one country to the next, and no clear sense of how cross-border travel will fare in the months ahead, many producers are thinking outside the box as they adapt to changing circumstances.
The challenge for producers moving forward was the subject of “The Current State of Co-production,” an online panel on Monday, which brought together eight leading women producers from across Europe. Presented during the Thessaloniki Film Festival, the discussion was hosted by the European Women’s Audiovisual Network (Ewa), with the support of Greece’s National Center of Audiovisual Media and Communication (Ekome).
The upside—for 2020 at least—is that most European producers appear determined to keep the production pipeline flowing.
The challenge for producers moving forward was the subject of “The Current State of Co-production,” an online panel on Monday, which brought together eight leading women producers from across Europe. Presented during the Thessaloniki Film Festival, the discussion was hosted by the European Women’s Audiovisual Network (Ewa), with the support of Greece’s National Center of Audiovisual Media and Communication (Ekome).
The upside—for 2020 at least—is that most European producers appear determined to keep the production pipeline flowing.
- 11/10/2020
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
European Film Promotion, an agency that promotes European filmmaking worldwide, has launched its flagship program, Producers on the Move, as a virtual series of events, replacing the physical events that usually take place at the canceled Cannes Film Festival.
The 20 up-and-coming producers from 20 European countries selected by Efp for the 21st edition of the program met digitally for the first time on Monday, where they were greeted by Efp president Markéta Santrochová.
Santrochová said that although the program had shifted to a virtual version, the essentials remained: “Connecting talented producers from across Europe, facilitating exchange and cooperation, and strengthening their industry networks.”
She added: “This has been Efp’s goal ever since the program was created in 2000, and it has become even more crucial now that the film landscape has changed, and co-operation, support and a sense of solidarity among film professionals are more important than ever before.”
On Tuesday,...
The 20 up-and-coming producers from 20 European countries selected by Efp for the 21st edition of the program met digitally for the first time on Monday, where they were greeted by Efp president Markéta Santrochová.
Santrochová said that although the program had shifted to a virtual version, the essentials remained: “Connecting talented producers from across Europe, facilitating exchange and cooperation, and strengthening their industry networks.”
She added: “This has been Efp’s goal ever since the program was created in 2000, and it has become even more crucial now that the film landscape has changed, and co-operation, support and a sense of solidarity among film professionals are more important than ever before.”
On Tuesday,...
- 5/12/2020
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Modovan comedy project ‘Carbon’ was the big winner.
Moldovan comedy Carbon has won the best pitch award at the Connecting Cottbus (coco) East-West Co-production Market held in Germany this week.
It is being produced by Sergiu Cumatrenco Jr and Ion Bors and will mark Bors’ feature directorial debut. The award includes a cash prize of €1,500 and free accreditation to the Producers Network at the Marche du Film in Cannes 2020.
The absurdist road movie, set during the armed conflict in Transnistria in the early 1990s, had been selected after winning the Transilvania Pitch Stop coco Award in Cluj in June.
It...
Moldovan comedy Carbon has won the best pitch award at the Connecting Cottbus (coco) East-West Co-production Market held in Germany this week.
It is being produced by Sergiu Cumatrenco Jr and Ion Bors and will mark Bors’ feature directorial debut. The award includes a cash prize of €1,500 and free accreditation to the Producers Network at the Marche du Film in Cannes 2020.
The absurdist road movie, set during the armed conflict in Transnistria in the early 1990s, had been selected after winning the Transilvania Pitch Stop coco Award in Cluj in June.
It...
- 11/8/2019
- by 158¦Martin Blaney¦40¦
- ScreenDaily
I had planned to see Circles (Serbia, directed by Srdan Golubovic) because my visits over the past 2 years to Romania, Poland, Lithuania and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo) have increased my interest in Central and Eastern Europe where the people are looking up (vs. in Western Europe where they are looking down). Now it has been submitted for the Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film and so I reprint my interview here which I did during Sundance earlier this year.
Sarajevo itself is especially remarkable as the only place in Europe where there has been a war since I was born. From 1991 to 1999 Serbia was involved in the Yugoslav Wars - the war in Slovenia, the war in Croatia, the war in Bosnia and the war in Kosovo. During this period, Slobodan Milošević was the authoritarian leader of Serbia, which was in turn part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This was was a war between people who spoke a common language but were split along religious lines, the Serbs being Eastern Orthodox and the Bosnians, Kosovians and Croations being Muslim.
The country known as Yugoslavia had been unified from 1918 to 1991-- first under a king as The Kingdom of Yugoslavia until 1941 and then as the Social Republic of Yugoslavia. Even as the Social Republic of Yugoslavia, it was a country more liberal then the other communist countries. It was a socialist republic open to west; its people could travel, the people had good jobs, it was more an example of socialism than of communism. Its geographical location was also at a true crossroad between east and west, formerly Ottomon and Muslim and at the same time very Eastern Orthodox and Catholic.
When the Ussr collapsed, Sarajevo, situated in the break-off nation Bosnia and Herzogovina was surrounded by Christian Serbs who bombarded the cities of the nation which they saw more as Muslim than as Christian in order to annex the land.
My dear Berlin friend, Geno Lechner from Berlin asked me to see it because she is in it. She plays the German wife of the protagonist. And my good friend Mickey Cottrell, of Inclusive PR is the publicist for Circles from the time it was in Sundance 2013's World Dramatic Competition and has also asked me to revise and repost what I wrote in Sundance.
So here it is:
Circles ripples out as a stone dropped in a placid lake, concentrically creating moral complexities for a group of people as their story strands emerge from one fateful moment.
Marco, a Serbian soldier on leave from the Serbo-Croatian War in 1993, returns to his Bosnian hometown. When three fellow soldiers accost Haris, a Muslim kiosk vendor, Marco intervenes, and it costs him his life.
Twelve years later, the war is over but the wounds remain open. Marco's father is rebuilding a church when the son of one of Marco's killers appears looking for work. Meanwhile, in Belgrade, Marco's friend Nabobs, a renowned surgeon, debates whether or not to operate on another of Marco's killers. And in Germany, Haris, now married with a family (Geno Lechner and her two daughters) strives to repay his debt to Marco's widow who arrives at his door seeking refuge.
John Nein, Sundance Senior Programmer says, "Srdan Golubovic's third feature employs a multifaceted, yet simple, structure that contemplates revenge, redemption, and reconciliation. Aware of how easily hatred and violence can create life-shattering ripples, he looks at the consequences of moral courage and asks whether a heroic act can generate ripples of another kind."
Circles was financed with funds from Serbia, Germany, France, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its international sales agent is Memento. Circles also screened in the Berlin Film Festival's Forum.
It is very important for the film’s director, Srdan Golubovic, that Circles receive wide distribution. It is based upon the true story of Srdjan Aleksic, a Serbian soldier who saved the life of his neighbor. When Golubovic read the story some years ago, he was against the war but on the sidelines watching, occasionally demonstrating against it, but not a part of it. He chose not to remake the story of the man then but to make it contemporary in order to close the book of his own private feelings about the war.
The man is universal in that he is saving a man, not "an enemy". The escaped man moved into a German world, which at the time looked very much like his own world, sparse, unattractively Soviet in style. However, he found his fortune there and created a life. The actor, Aleksandar Bercek, says that when he met the real Srdjan Aleksic, he said to him, "Now I am walking; it could have been different. I could have been lying down." You will see in a Google search that the memory of Srdjan is very much alive today. The real man's grave is visited yearly by the survivor he saved and by all the former Yugoslavians in the area of Serbia, Bosnia, Herzogovina, Croatia and Slovenia. He has received a posthumous medal of honor and has streets named after him in several cities.
This is one of the rare films which unites everybody; it is about forgiveness and reconciliation. And as such it deserves very wide distribution. And as a work of heroic art, it deserves to be seen by many people. We hope you will visit Memento during Berlin and place your orders. For those of you who are not distributors going to market to acquire films, we hope you will have a chance to see this film in your local theaters or homes.
Srdan Golubovic’s earlier film from 2007, The Trap, garnered great acclaim and was Serbia’s submission for an Academy Award nomination.
When director Srdan Golubovic and producer Jelena Mitrovic and I spoke during Sundance, they spoke of what a great surprise Sundance was to them. They found the people very warm. The audiences were totally open, very curious and emotionally connected. It is very rare for Srdan to find an audience that is not afraid to ask questions and eager to talk about the film. And, unlike at most film festivals, at Sundance, they saw the programmers every day and were always able to speak to them. As there were not too many films in competition — 12 in World Cinema section as opposed to 16 last year — the attention they received from the Sundance personnel and volunteers was very special.
Read the praise received by The Hollywood Reporter
Further information:
Serbian with English subtitles, 2012, 112 minutes, color, Serbia/Germany/France/Croatia/Slovenia, World Dramatic Competiton at Sundance, Forum at the Berlinale
Cast and Credits
Director: Srdan Golubovic
Screenwriters: Srdjan Koljevic, Melina Pota Koljevic
Producers: Jelena Mitrovic, Alexander Ris, Emilie Georges, Boris T. Matic, Danijel Hocevar
Cinematographer: Alexsander Ilic
Production Designer: Goran Joksimovic
Composer: Mario Schneider
Sound Designer: Julij Zornik
Costume Designer: Ljiljana Petrovic
Principal Cast: Aleksandar Bercek, Leon Lucev, Nebojsa Glogovac, Hristina Popovic, Geno Lechner, Nikola Rakocevic, Vuk Kostic...
Sarajevo itself is especially remarkable as the only place in Europe where there has been a war since I was born. From 1991 to 1999 Serbia was involved in the Yugoslav Wars - the war in Slovenia, the war in Croatia, the war in Bosnia and the war in Kosovo. During this period, Slobodan Milošević was the authoritarian leader of Serbia, which was in turn part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This was was a war between people who spoke a common language but were split along religious lines, the Serbs being Eastern Orthodox and the Bosnians, Kosovians and Croations being Muslim.
The country known as Yugoslavia had been unified from 1918 to 1991-- first under a king as The Kingdom of Yugoslavia until 1941 and then as the Social Republic of Yugoslavia. Even as the Social Republic of Yugoslavia, it was a country more liberal then the other communist countries. It was a socialist republic open to west; its people could travel, the people had good jobs, it was more an example of socialism than of communism. Its geographical location was also at a true crossroad between east and west, formerly Ottomon and Muslim and at the same time very Eastern Orthodox and Catholic.
When the Ussr collapsed, Sarajevo, situated in the break-off nation Bosnia and Herzogovina was surrounded by Christian Serbs who bombarded the cities of the nation which they saw more as Muslim than as Christian in order to annex the land.
My dear Berlin friend, Geno Lechner from Berlin asked me to see it because she is in it. She plays the German wife of the protagonist. And my good friend Mickey Cottrell, of Inclusive PR is the publicist for Circles from the time it was in Sundance 2013's World Dramatic Competition and has also asked me to revise and repost what I wrote in Sundance.
So here it is:
Circles ripples out as a stone dropped in a placid lake, concentrically creating moral complexities for a group of people as their story strands emerge from one fateful moment.
Marco, a Serbian soldier on leave from the Serbo-Croatian War in 1993, returns to his Bosnian hometown. When three fellow soldiers accost Haris, a Muslim kiosk vendor, Marco intervenes, and it costs him his life.
Twelve years later, the war is over but the wounds remain open. Marco's father is rebuilding a church when the son of one of Marco's killers appears looking for work. Meanwhile, in Belgrade, Marco's friend Nabobs, a renowned surgeon, debates whether or not to operate on another of Marco's killers. And in Germany, Haris, now married with a family (Geno Lechner and her two daughters) strives to repay his debt to Marco's widow who arrives at his door seeking refuge.
John Nein, Sundance Senior Programmer says, "Srdan Golubovic's third feature employs a multifaceted, yet simple, structure that contemplates revenge, redemption, and reconciliation. Aware of how easily hatred and violence can create life-shattering ripples, he looks at the consequences of moral courage and asks whether a heroic act can generate ripples of another kind."
Circles was financed with funds from Serbia, Germany, France, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its international sales agent is Memento. Circles also screened in the Berlin Film Festival's Forum.
It is very important for the film’s director, Srdan Golubovic, that Circles receive wide distribution. It is based upon the true story of Srdjan Aleksic, a Serbian soldier who saved the life of his neighbor. When Golubovic read the story some years ago, he was against the war but on the sidelines watching, occasionally demonstrating against it, but not a part of it. He chose not to remake the story of the man then but to make it contemporary in order to close the book of his own private feelings about the war.
The man is universal in that he is saving a man, not "an enemy". The escaped man moved into a German world, which at the time looked very much like his own world, sparse, unattractively Soviet in style. However, he found his fortune there and created a life. The actor, Aleksandar Bercek, says that when he met the real Srdjan Aleksic, he said to him, "Now I am walking; it could have been different. I could have been lying down." You will see in a Google search that the memory of Srdjan is very much alive today. The real man's grave is visited yearly by the survivor he saved and by all the former Yugoslavians in the area of Serbia, Bosnia, Herzogovina, Croatia and Slovenia. He has received a posthumous medal of honor and has streets named after him in several cities.
This is one of the rare films which unites everybody; it is about forgiveness and reconciliation. And as such it deserves very wide distribution. And as a work of heroic art, it deserves to be seen by many people. We hope you will visit Memento during Berlin and place your orders. For those of you who are not distributors going to market to acquire films, we hope you will have a chance to see this film in your local theaters or homes.
Srdan Golubovic’s earlier film from 2007, The Trap, garnered great acclaim and was Serbia’s submission for an Academy Award nomination.
When director Srdan Golubovic and producer Jelena Mitrovic and I spoke during Sundance, they spoke of what a great surprise Sundance was to them. They found the people very warm. The audiences were totally open, very curious and emotionally connected. It is very rare for Srdan to find an audience that is not afraid to ask questions and eager to talk about the film. And, unlike at most film festivals, at Sundance, they saw the programmers every day and were always able to speak to them. As there were not too many films in competition — 12 in World Cinema section as opposed to 16 last year — the attention they received from the Sundance personnel and volunteers was very special.
Read the praise received by The Hollywood Reporter
Further information:
Serbian with English subtitles, 2012, 112 minutes, color, Serbia/Germany/France/Croatia/Slovenia, World Dramatic Competiton at Sundance, Forum at the Berlinale
Cast and Credits
Director: Srdan Golubovic
Screenwriters: Srdjan Koljevic, Melina Pota Koljevic
Producers: Jelena Mitrovic, Alexander Ris, Emilie Georges, Boris T. Matic, Danijel Hocevar
Cinematographer: Alexsander Ilic
Production Designer: Goran Joksimovic
Composer: Mario Schneider
Sound Designer: Julij Zornik
Costume Designer: Ljiljana Petrovic
Principal Cast: Aleksandar Bercek, Leon Lucev, Nebojsa Glogovac, Hristina Popovic, Geno Lechner, Nikola Rakocevic, Vuk Kostic...
- 11/21/2013
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Cowboys wins audience award, Hush also wins multiple prizes.
The 60th Pula Film Festival – the country’s national film festival — comes to a close today celebrating a particularly strong year for Croatian film. Co-production Circles and Croatian national production A Stranger [pictured] each won a slew of top prizes.
Croatian filmmaking is having something of a boom time at the moment, both in terms of number of productions and their international appeal – both Circles and A Stranger played in Berlin’s Forum, and Dual and The Priest’s Children were buzzy titles in Karlovy Vary earlier this month.
Pula presented a record 24 titles in its competitions for national films and minority co-productions. The healthy levels of production are in part due to support from the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, but also seeing local broadcasters backing films for the first time in 9 years — such as festival opening comedy Handymen (Majstori) by Dalibor Matanic.
Of course...
The 60th Pula Film Festival – the country’s national film festival — comes to a close today celebrating a particularly strong year for Croatian film. Co-production Circles and Croatian national production A Stranger [pictured] each won a slew of top prizes.
Croatian filmmaking is having something of a boom time at the moment, both in terms of number of productions and their international appeal – both Circles and A Stranger played in Berlin’s Forum, and Dual and The Priest’s Children were buzzy titles in Karlovy Vary earlier this month.
Pula presented a record 24 titles in its competitions for national films and minority co-productions. The healthy levels of production are in part due to support from the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, but also seeing local broadcasters backing films for the first time in 9 years — such as festival opening comedy Handymen (Majstori) by Dalibor Matanic.
Of course...
- 7/28/2013
- by wendy.mitchell@screendaily.com (Wendy Mitchell)
- ScreenDaily
I’ve read some overriding impressions of this year’s Sundance, Peter Knegt’s on Sex and Sundance naturally caught my attention immediately. While I agree with his observations and would add that CAA’s party was the cherry on top of it all, I actually think that whatever one’s concerns of the moment are, that subject will be addressed for that person by more than one film at Sundance. After all, the reason sex sells so well is that everyone is concerned with sex just about every minute of the day (according for Freud, that is)
The Wrap cites “a Sundance for bold, kinky subject matter, for lots of sex (onscreen), for indie directors ramping up the excess and melodrama in a way that would have seemed completely out of place back in the days when the phrase ‘a Sundance movie’ usually meant something restrained and naturalistic like ‘Frozen River’ or ‘In the Bedroom’."
Sundance might also be said to be skewed this year toward: Women (on the rise), Violence (by gun, government, war), or, for me personally, reality.
Whether the loss of reality as in Escape from Tomorrow, Crystal Fairy or Magic Magic, or even The World According to Dick Cheney, or God Loves Uganda in which the person’s grasp on reality was lost in the normal course of living, or the thin border between reality and fiction as expressed in the panels on documentaries or “true fiction” or the Sloan Foundation panel on Science and Film, I found that most of what I was watching and hearing was concerned with “reality”. For those who know me, they are aware that my concerns at this time are dealing with the shifting realities of my life. And that is what I found being addressed by the events of Sundance.
I did not see the acquisitions films. I concentrated on World Cinema and mostly Latino and Eastern European cinema, though I was lucky to catch What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love from Indonesia. The reality of the deaf, mute and blind differs from ours though love is the same and is summed up when one person says, “the male loves what he sees and the female loves what she hears”.
I was also lucky to have seen Fruitvale, the winner of so much acclaim. The huge disconnect between reality and fantasy is found in the security guards’ readiness to resort to violence simply by seeing the color of another man’s skin. They were either looking for a fight or were panicked by the number of revelers on the train. Either way it was a tragic ending, redeemed only by the yearly memorial held in Oscar Grant’s honor. God Loves Uganda shows an entire nation deluded by extremists who speak only the deadly evil of homosexuality. I couldn’t stand watching the degradation of a people taking place because of the glib jabber of a white right-wing evangelist purporting to be speaking for G’d. Circles deals with a reality creating events otherwise unimaginable except for their occurring within a context of race hatred and war. Crystal Fairy’s gringo protagonists live in an unreal world inspired by past emotional injuries and only come to reality through the support of compassionate and accepting friends. Magic Magic, Escape from Tomorrow, A Teacher and Houston are about complete breaks from reality by the protagonists. Il Futuro likewise, in the way of Last Tango in Paris, shows how Thanatos’ antithesis Eros create an extreme sexual acting out of grief. In Lasting, winner of the Cinematography Award, reality finally wins out and a wiser love ensues. The doc Who is Dayani Cristal shows a reality we cannot deny as people brave unreal challenges just to aspire to the American Dream. The World According to Dick Cheney shows a man so blind that he cannot think of a single fault in his own character. The havoc he caused to the U.S. as a result was so devastating that I could barely watch the film to its end. No brings the role of media to a happy conclusion, though the media hype itself was based totally in fantasy, as media most often is. I Used to be Darker is the exception as it is deals entirely with reality. Inequality For All was the only dose of realism I received and I was inspired by the film to speak out!
Fifteen films in six days is not too bad, though it doesn’t give me bragging rights to having seen the top winners of awards or acquisitions, except for Fruitvale.
A big change for me was that I attended panels along with attending my traditional Creative Coalition luncheon for inspiring teachers.
The panels also dealt with the thin line between reality and fiction, “true fiction” and documentaries, communication and sharing between science and film.
Science in Film Forum a 10 year collaboration between The Sloan Foundation and the Sundance Film Festival which aims to encourage more realistic and compelling stories about science and technology themes and characters seemed somewhat debilitated by the very issue of how scientists and filmmakers communicate. I will write more on this later, but in terms of reality and unreality, the difference between the delivery of a scientist and an actor (in this case Kate Winslet in Contagion) as they explain the phenomenology of contagion itself is dramatically different. And the questions a filmmaker asks of a scientist will determine how communicative a scientist can be in terms of making a movie more realistic. Frankly speaking, Jon Amiel and screenwriter Scott Burns made more sense to me than the scientists. More on that later as well. In Imitation of Life, the panel with Sarah Polley, Michael Polish, Segio Oksman and others, about how art mirrors life was completely about reality vs. lies, another form of unreality. The best panel was one I caught accidently about the N.Y. Times online Opinion Pages and the shorts on Op-Docs, the best of which is called The Public Square by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, taking place in Times Square where protesters counter an anti-Islamic speech by pastor Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who set fire to the Koran, by singing The Beatles. This is a great new venue for short films. If I were making shorts, I would aim to land here.
In the editors’ own words:
"Since Op-Docs, our forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with creative latitude across many subjects, started in November 2011, 46 short films and videos have been published on nytimes.com. Today (December 16), we begin a new Op-Docs feature: Scenes. It will be a platform for very short work — snippets of street life, brief observations and interviews, clips from experimental and artistic nonfiction videos — that follow less traditional documentary narrative conventions. This first Scenes video presents a classic New York moment, recorded last year." — The Editors
The morning of my last at Sundance, I went to the Marriott Headquarters and wrote, saw friends as they passed by...shared the good news of my friend Rigo’s We Are What We Are selling to eOne for six figures for the U.S. and shared his excitement for the future of this film. eOne already had acquired Canada and U.K., South Africa and Australia/ N.Z. too, so this was an affirmation of its sincere approval of the finished product. Since EOne's merger with Alliance, not only is it the largest distributor and international sales agent in Canada, with branches In U.S., U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, but it is also the Only Big One. The smaller companies now have the chance to move up to second position since the number one and two companies have merged. I have no doubt that Mr. Victor Loewy, the seller of Alliance, will still hold the position of victor, after all, his wallet is bigger than any and everybody else's. It's funny because eOne, though it seemed to pop up from nowhere (tv), the people running it are the same configuration as always: Patrice Theroux, Patrice Roy, Bryan Gliserman, Patrick Roy, consultant and former Lionsgate founder Jeff Sackman. I love it when I see him, because he has succeeded in this business without ever changing who he is. That in itself merits reward.
This afternoon I met with Gamila Yistra who is in Sundance for the first time, exploring ways to extend and reconfigure The Binger Institute in Amsterdam where we began our professional teaching in its first years. From the idea to the screen, projects and their producers, writers and directors will have extensive workshopping, and the relationships will be lasting ones. As we were leaving the Marriott Headquarters to go to the Planned Parenthood party to meet Caroline Libresco who announced a special women's initiative in Sundance, we ran into Paul Federbush, Director of international for Sundance Institute's Film Program; he told her, to her surprise, that the had a meeting set for the next day.
At the party where Gamila met Caroline, we ran into Mary Jane Skalski who's Two Good Girls is playing here. Others at the Planned Parenthood reception were producer Nermeen Shaikh of Democracynow.org’s whose Daily Independent News Hour with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez is drawing great praise. The event was marked by the 40th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade (January 22, 2013).
“As the nation’s leading women’s health care provider and advocate, Planned Parenthood understands that abortion is a deeply personal and often complex decision for a woman to consider, if and when she needs it,” said Cecile Richards, president, Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “A woman should have accurate information about all of her options around her pregnancy. To protect her health and the health of her family, a woman must have access to safe, legal abortion without interference from politicians, as protected by the Supreme Court for the last 40 years.”
I took a walk down Main Street and a walk up some stairs and discovered a jewel of a hotel for those with the money to spend. Next time you’re there, check out the Washington School House. It was like stepping into an enchanted history where you could almost imagine living in 1889 when it was built.
As my last act in Sundance, I searched the lost and found for my lost hat (didn’t find it!), and went to the 6:30 press screening of Magic Magic. Stay tuned for my interview with Sebastian Silva about this and his other film, Crystal Fairy, which as my readers know, I liked very much. How did it happen that he got two films into the limited space of Sundance is not a question answered in my interview.
After that I saw the 9:00 screening of Houston, an adult film about a German "headhunter" who is sent from Germany to Houston to recruit the CEO of a large petroleum company for a German based conglomerate. Both films' central concern was the perception of reality, especially across cultural lines.
In conclusion, I would repeat that this year's theme was the nature of reality and its fluid parameters as perceived by various individuals.
The next day I left in the morning to return my car by noon. The road became icy and the planes were unable to take off until 4pm. Lucky for me my plane was scheduled to leave at 9 pm and left on schedule. I had hours to spend at the airport and was lucky in meeting Michele Turnure-Salleo, the Director of Filmmaker 360 of the San Francisco Film Society (http://www.sffs.org/). We have been trying to catch up all year and this was our chance. At the same little table where we set up our computers, we were joined by another Sundance refugee Anecita Agustinez who is a journalist nad producer for www.onnativeground.org a news site dealing with native American issues.
Watch for further blogs on Sundance:
Interviews with:
Director Jacek Borcuch and producer Piotr Kobus of Lasting (Isa: Manana), winner of the Sundance’s World Cinema Cinematography Award Director Srdan Golubovic and producer Jelena Mitrovic of Circles (Isa: Memento) and winner of World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Prize for Artistic Vision Director Sebastian Silva of Crystal Fairy, winner of Sundance’s Directing Award, and Magic Magic (Isa: 6 Sales). Documentary and science panels
See you in L.A. Or Berlin! Or Guadajara in March!
The Wrap cites “a Sundance for bold, kinky subject matter, for lots of sex (onscreen), for indie directors ramping up the excess and melodrama in a way that would have seemed completely out of place back in the days when the phrase ‘a Sundance movie’ usually meant something restrained and naturalistic like ‘Frozen River’ or ‘In the Bedroom’."
Sundance might also be said to be skewed this year toward: Women (on the rise), Violence (by gun, government, war), or, for me personally, reality.
Whether the loss of reality as in Escape from Tomorrow, Crystal Fairy or Magic Magic, or even The World According to Dick Cheney, or God Loves Uganda in which the person’s grasp on reality was lost in the normal course of living, or the thin border between reality and fiction as expressed in the panels on documentaries or “true fiction” or the Sloan Foundation panel on Science and Film, I found that most of what I was watching and hearing was concerned with “reality”. For those who know me, they are aware that my concerns at this time are dealing with the shifting realities of my life. And that is what I found being addressed by the events of Sundance.
I did not see the acquisitions films. I concentrated on World Cinema and mostly Latino and Eastern European cinema, though I was lucky to catch What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love from Indonesia. The reality of the deaf, mute and blind differs from ours though love is the same and is summed up when one person says, “the male loves what he sees and the female loves what she hears”.
I was also lucky to have seen Fruitvale, the winner of so much acclaim. The huge disconnect between reality and fantasy is found in the security guards’ readiness to resort to violence simply by seeing the color of another man’s skin. They were either looking for a fight or were panicked by the number of revelers on the train. Either way it was a tragic ending, redeemed only by the yearly memorial held in Oscar Grant’s honor. God Loves Uganda shows an entire nation deluded by extremists who speak only the deadly evil of homosexuality. I couldn’t stand watching the degradation of a people taking place because of the glib jabber of a white right-wing evangelist purporting to be speaking for G’d. Circles deals with a reality creating events otherwise unimaginable except for their occurring within a context of race hatred and war. Crystal Fairy’s gringo protagonists live in an unreal world inspired by past emotional injuries and only come to reality through the support of compassionate and accepting friends. Magic Magic, Escape from Tomorrow, A Teacher and Houston are about complete breaks from reality by the protagonists. Il Futuro likewise, in the way of Last Tango in Paris, shows how Thanatos’ antithesis Eros create an extreme sexual acting out of grief. In Lasting, winner of the Cinematography Award, reality finally wins out and a wiser love ensues. The doc Who is Dayani Cristal shows a reality we cannot deny as people brave unreal challenges just to aspire to the American Dream. The World According to Dick Cheney shows a man so blind that he cannot think of a single fault in his own character. The havoc he caused to the U.S. as a result was so devastating that I could barely watch the film to its end. No brings the role of media to a happy conclusion, though the media hype itself was based totally in fantasy, as media most often is. I Used to be Darker is the exception as it is deals entirely with reality. Inequality For All was the only dose of realism I received and I was inspired by the film to speak out!
Fifteen films in six days is not too bad, though it doesn’t give me bragging rights to having seen the top winners of awards or acquisitions, except for Fruitvale.
A big change for me was that I attended panels along with attending my traditional Creative Coalition luncheon for inspiring teachers.
The panels also dealt with the thin line between reality and fiction, “true fiction” and documentaries, communication and sharing between science and film.
Science in Film Forum a 10 year collaboration between The Sloan Foundation and the Sundance Film Festival which aims to encourage more realistic and compelling stories about science and technology themes and characters seemed somewhat debilitated by the very issue of how scientists and filmmakers communicate. I will write more on this later, but in terms of reality and unreality, the difference between the delivery of a scientist and an actor (in this case Kate Winslet in Contagion) as they explain the phenomenology of contagion itself is dramatically different. And the questions a filmmaker asks of a scientist will determine how communicative a scientist can be in terms of making a movie more realistic. Frankly speaking, Jon Amiel and screenwriter Scott Burns made more sense to me than the scientists. More on that later as well. In Imitation of Life, the panel with Sarah Polley, Michael Polish, Segio Oksman and others, about how art mirrors life was completely about reality vs. lies, another form of unreality. The best panel was one I caught accidently about the N.Y. Times online Opinion Pages and the shorts on Op-Docs, the best of which is called The Public Square by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, taking place in Times Square where protesters counter an anti-Islamic speech by pastor Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who set fire to the Koran, by singing The Beatles. This is a great new venue for short films. If I were making shorts, I would aim to land here.
In the editors’ own words:
"Since Op-Docs, our forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with creative latitude across many subjects, started in November 2011, 46 short films and videos have been published on nytimes.com. Today (December 16), we begin a new Op-Docs feature: Scenes. It will be a platform for very short work — snippets of street life, brief observations and interviews, clips from experimental and artistic nonfiction videos — that follow less traditional documentary narrative conventions. This first Scenes video presents a classic New York moment, recorded last year." — The Editors
The morning of my last at Sundance, I went to the Marriott Headquarters and wrote, saw friends as they passed by...shared the good news of my friend Rigo’s We Are What We Are selling to eOne for six figures for the U.S. and shared his excitement for the future of this film. eOne already had acquired Canada and U.K., South Africa and Australia/ N.Z. too, so this was an affirmation of its sincere approval of the finished product. Since EOne's merger with Alliance, not only is it the largest distributor and international sales agent in Canada, with branches In U.S., U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, but it is also the Only Big One. The smaller companies now have the chance to move up to second position since the number one and two companies have merged. I have no doubt that Mr. Victor Loewy, the seller of Alliance, will still hold the position of victor, after all, his wallet is bigger than any and everybody else's. It's funny because eOne, though it seemed to pop up from nowhere (tv), the people running it are the same configuration as always: Patrice Theroux, Patrice Roy, Bryan Gliserman, Patrick Roy, consultant and former Lionsgate founder Jeff Sackman. I love it when I see him, because he has succeeded in this business without ever changing who he is. That in itself merits reward.
This afternoon I met with Gamila Yistra who is in Sundance for the first time, exploring ways to extend and reconfigure The Binger Institute in Amsterdam where we began our professional teaching in its first years. From the idea to the screen, projects and their producers, writers and directors will have extensive workshopping, and the relationships will be lasting ones. As we were leaving the Marriott Headquarters to go to the Planned Parenthood party to meet Caroline Libresco who announced a special women's initiative in Sundance, we ran into Paul Federbush, Director of international for Sundance Institute's Film Program; he told her, to her surprise, that the had a meeting set for the next day.
At the party where Gamila met Caroline, we ran into Mary Jane Skalski who's Two Good Girls is playing here. Others at the Planned Parenthood reception were producer Nermeen Shaikh of Democracynow.org’s whose Daily Independent News Hour with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez is drawing great praise. The event was marked by the 40th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade (January 22, 2013).
“As the nation’s leading women’s health care provider and advocate, Planned Parenthood understands that abortion is a deeply personal and often complex decision for a woman to consider, if and when she needs it,” said Cecile Richards, president, Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “A woman should have accurate information about all of her options around her pregnancy. To protect her health and the health of her family, a woman must have access to safe, legal abortion without interference from politicians, as protected by the Supreme Court for the last 40 years.”
I took a walk down Main Street and a walk up some stairs and discovered a jewel of a hotel for those with the money to spend. Next time you’re there, check out the Washington School House. It was like stepping into an enchanted history where you could almost imagine living in 1889 when it was built.
As my last act in Sundance, I searched the lost and found for my lost hat (didn’t find it!), and went to the 6:30 press screening of Magic Magic. Stay tuned for my interview with Sebastian Silva about this and his other film, Crystal Fairy, which as my readers know, I liked very much. How did it happen that he got two films into the limited space of Sundance is not a question answered in my interview.
After that I saw the 9:00 screening of Houston, an adult film about a German "headhunter" who is sent from Germany to Houston to recruit the CEO of a large petroleum company for a German based conglomerate. Both films' central concern was the perception of reality, especially across cultural lines.
In conclusion, I would repeat that this year's theme was the nature of reality and its fluid parameters as perceived by various individuals.
The next day I left in the morning to return my car by noon. The road became icy and the planes were unable to take off until 4pm. Lucky for me my plane was scheduled to leave at 9 pm and left on schedule. I had hours to spend at the airport and was lucky in meeting Michele Turnure-Salleo, the Director of Filmmaker 360 of the San Francisco Film Society (http://www.sffs.org/). We have been trying to catch up all year and this was our chance. At the same little table where we set up our computers, we were joined by another Sundance refugee Anecita Agustinez who is a journalist nad producer for www.onnativeground.org a news site dealing with native American issues.
Watch for further blogs on Sundance:
Interviews with:
Director Jacek Borcuch and producer Piotr Kobus of Lasting (Isa: Manana), winner of the Sundance’s World Cinema Cinematography Award Director Srdan Golubovic and producer Jelena Mitrovic of Circles (Isa: Memento) and winner of World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Prize for Artistic Vision Director Sebastian Silva of Crystal Fairy, winner of Sundance’s Directing Award, and Magic Magic (Isa: 6 Sales). Documentary and science panels
See you in L.A. Or Berlin! Or Guadajara in March!
- 1/29/2013
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Cologne, Germany -- French producer Lauranne Bourrachot ("A Prophet"), Greece's Yorgos Tsourgiannis ("Dogtooth") and Alvaro Alonso of Spain ("The Orange Girl") are among the 23 up-and-comers named for this year's Producers on the Move program in Cannes.
Producers on the Move runs May 15-18 during the Cannes Film Festival and brings together some of Europe's most promising behind-the-scenes talent with an eye to creating cross-border networking opportunities.
This year's top 23 (each European country picks its own up-and-comer) includes Kamen Kalev, the Bulgarian director/producer of Tokyo Film Fest winner "Eastern Plays;" Serbia's Jelena Mitrovic, whose credits include Antonio Nuic's "Donkey" and upcoming World War I drama "Besa" and Isabelle Stead, the Brit producer of Sundance entry "Son of Babylon."
Organizers European Film Promotion claim nearly 50% of Producers on the Move participants over the past 11 years have set up co-pros together. Recent success stories include Bettina Brokemper of Germany (Producer on...
Producers on the Move runs May 15-18 during the Cannes Film Festival and brings together some of Europe's most promising behind-the-scenes talent with an eye to creating cross-border networking opportunities.
This year's top 23 (each European country picks its own up-and-comer) includes Kamen Kalev, the Bulgarian director/producer of Tokyo Film Fest winner "Eastern Plays;" Serbia's Jelena Mitrovic, whose credits include Antonio Nuic's "Donkey" and upcoming World War I drama "Besa" and Isabelle Stead, the Brit producer of Sundance entry "Son of Babylon."
Organizers European Film Promotion claim nearly 50% of Producers on the Move participants over the past 11 years have set up co-pros together. Recent success stories include Bettina Brokemper of Germany (Producer on...
- 4/20/2010
- by By Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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