Photos of 25 May 2007

Ocean's Thirteen - Red Steps
© BBQ

Ocean's Thirteen - Red Steps
© BBQ

Alexandra, film's team
© ALB

Georges Clooney - Ocean's Thirteen
© DC

Alexandra, film's team
© ALB

Martin Scorsese - Cinema Masterclass
© DC

Ocean's Thirteen - Red Steps
© BBQ

Promise Me This

Two-time Palme d’Or winner for When Father was Away on Business in 1985 and Underground in 1995, Emir Kusturica is once again showing a film in the Official Competition entitled Promise Me This. The action takes place in the Serbian countryside and centers on the promises made by Tsane (Uros Milovanovic) to his aging grandfather (Aleksandar Bercek): go over the three hills into the nearest town and sell their cow at the market there. With the money, Tsane must buy a religious icon and then anything else he wants. Lastly, the biggest challenge: he must find a wife to bring home.

Promise Me This tells the story of a boy who promises his grandfather that he will return to his village a man. Kusturica, who was president of the Jury in 2005, is back in Cannes with offbeat tales of trials and tribulations of life in the Balkans and a glimpse of another world, while touching on universal values and issues.

Photo Copyright AFP

PRESENTATION OF THE SHORT FILMS IN COMPETITION

The official screening of the short films In Competition occurred on this eleventh day of the Cannes Festival. An international Jury, chaired by Chinese director Jia Zhangke and having as members the Iranian actress and filmmaker Niki Karimi, American film costume designer Nadoolman Landis, French writer J.M.G. Le Clézio and European director Dominik Moll, will be awarding a Short Film Palme d'Or to one of the eleven films in the selection at the Festival's closing ceremonies.

This year, the European continent has five shorts in the running for the special Palme d'Or : Résistance aux Tremblements by Olivier Hems (France), Ark by Grzegorz Jonkajtys (Poland), Gia To Onoma Tou Spourgitiou (In the Name of the Sparrow) by Kyros Papavassiliou (Greece – Cyprus), Spegelbarn (The Looking Glass) by Erik Rosenlund (Sweden, Finland), and Het Zusje by Marco Van Geffen (Netherlands). As for North America, it is represented in the competition by The Oates’ Valor by Tim Cahill (United States), The Last 15 by Antonio Campos (United States), and Ver Llover by Elisa Miller (Mexico).

The Asian films in the selection are Ah Ma by Anthony Chen (Singapore) and My Dear Rosetta by Yang Hea-hoon (South Korea). Oceania is also represented, with Run by Mark Albiston (New Zealand).

Canadian animated short wins two awards at Cannes film festival

The Canadian animated short "Madame Tutli-Putli" has won two awards at the Cannes film festival.

The National Film Board of Canada short, from Montreal filmmakers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, won the Canal Plus Award for best short film and the Petit Rail d'Or for best short film, announced during the festival's International Critics' Week. "Madame Tutli-Putli" is a stop-motion animated film that follows a woman's existential journey aboard a night train. It features puppet animation and ground-breaking visual techniques.

It's the first film from Lavis and Szczerbowski. The pair were in France to accept the award.

The Canal Plus Award means that "Madame Tutli-Putli" will be broadcast on the French pay-TV channel. The directors will also be invited to the Moulin d'Ande, a historical monument and artists' retreat.

Lavis and Szczerbowski will also receive $6,000 in equipment from Panavision Alga Techno to shoot their next film. Le Petit Rail d'Or is awarded by a group of 100 cinephile railwaymen.

"Madame Tulti-Putli" will have its North American premiere at the Worldwide Shorts Festival in Toronto from June 12 to 17.

Cannes Attracts Hedge Funds, Private-Equity Firms

May 25 - Cannes, the world's most prestigious film festival, is drawing investment by hedge funds and private- equity companies in motion-picture financing, production and distribution.

Film production companies said the money is transforming the way some movies are being made and sold, with hedge-fund managers becoming piggy banks for the industry. Since 2005, funds and private-equity investors have committed at least $4.5 billion to films, betting that the box-office returns can beat other investments.

`There is an influx of capital into the market, and that's driven mostly by hedge funds,'' said Daniel Miller, a partner at Screen Capital International, a Los Angeles-based finance company for TV and filmmakers. ``A number of U.S. and European hedge funds have gotten interested in film.''

Miller, in an interview at Cannes, said the increased capital meant that ``any producer who can pull together just the equity portion of their budget, which is usually 20 percent, 10 to 20 percent, is able to get the rest of it pretty quickly.''

`Both at studio level and independent level you have so much capital available,'' said David Mollner, managing director at Screen Capital International. He said a lot of money `` is being deployed in new ways in the media, and one of them is to try and grab the power in the production, financing and distribution of motion pictures.''

Rows of Yachts

Banks and investment firms share moorings with film companies on the luxury yachts lined up at the festival. About 10,000 buyers and sellers hustle for a deal along the Croisette, the French city's main drag: There are 4,000 films taking part - -10 percent more than last year -- and 1,500 screenings across town.

William Pfeiffer, chief executive of Celestial Pictures, which has offices in Hong Kong and Beijing, said Asian films are doing well in attracting funding. ``Now I think that those films are doing so well on a consistent basis, that private-equity money is starting to come out to Asia.''

Vivek Sharma, marketing director at Future Capital Partners, a structured asset-finance company, said in Cannes that the investors also get ``a taste of the industry, the magic, the dream, as it were, that they invested in.''

Bill Gottleib, of Burbank, California-based Gorilla Pictures, said Cannes has become ``much more of a signing festival or market than it was in the past, and it's a good market for us.''

To contact the reporter on this story:
Mark Beech in London at mbeech@bloomberg.net .