Category: media

• India already has the biggest film industry in the world. Now it is “riding a growing wave of television, internet and computer animation technologies along with an expanding international audience to become a potential alternative to its State-side big brother, Hollywood.” – New Zealand Herald (Reuters) 04/19/00
  
  
  • THE LINEUP for this year’s Cannes Film Festival is announced. – Ottawa Citizen (AP) 04/19/00
    
    
  • Major US studios largely missing in this year’s Cannes lineup. – Variety 04/19/00
    
    
  • Official Cannes lineup. – Variety 04/19/00

The Australian Film Institute has been told its funding for research and for distribution of documentaries is to be cut. That means that crucial promotion of Australian film is in jeopardy.  “It seems almost impossible that in the year 2000 one has to push the concept that information and education are important to industry development. I thought we’d got past that.” – The Age (Melbourne) 04/19/00

Shorts, trailers, and animation features have been available on the web for some time, yet no major studio had yet made full-length features available for download – until now. Miramax Films has signed an agreement with SightSound.com to make 12 of their indie films available, on a pay-per-view basis, over the web. “Yet they haven’t yet decided which titles will be made available, how soon, or at what cost.” – CNN (AP) 04/19/00

Hackers allegedly supporting the Basque separatist group ETA sabotaged the Web site of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum. – ComputeUser.com (Newsbytes) 04/19/00

“If nothing else, it could be the most photogenic picket line in the history of organized labor.” The Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists have called for a strike new television and radio commercials until advertisers agree to extend “pay-per-play” residuals (in which actors are paid based on the number of times an ad runs) to cable TV. – E! Online 04/19/00

What, exactly, constitutes an interactive broadcast? If webstreamers are broadcasters and can get blanket royalty licenses to cover playing music like broadcasters do, then streaming takes a big jump forward. If the licenses aren’t allowed, then a webcaster would have to go to every artist it wants to play to get permission. That would guarantee stifle the infant industry. The Copyright Office will investigate. – Wired 04/19/00

Independent films are hot: “Suddenly the blockbuster culture, the belief that only big money thrown at big screens can work in a popcorn-eating world, feels threatened by the “indie” insurgents, massing on the skyline as if in a John Ford Western. Should the moguls offer battle or a peace pipe?” – Financial Times 04/17/00

A number of critics are talking about a renaissance in Hollywood movies. There are a number of reasons, but one of them, ironically, was the success of “Titanic.” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 04/16/00

Tel Aviv gets its own documentary film festival. Is the step-child of moviedom getting more respect these days? – Jerusalem Post 04/16/00

Minnesota Public Radio has bought “Marketplace” from KUSC. The northlanders previously assumed control of a Los Angeles public radio station and the MPR president says “I want the doors to be open to the creative community.” The new venture should be “a hothouse to incubate new ideas based on Los Angeles talent, cultural resources, ideas.” The production company’s name might evolve into something like Los Angeles Public Radio Productions. – Los Angeles Times 04/14/00