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First Hand Films is at IDFA with a busy slate including portmanteau project ’The Ten Commandments’.

Toei has acquired Japanese rights to Leslie Shampaine and Pip Gilmour’s completed Billy Elliot-style US doc Call Me Dancer, from Switzerland’s First Hand Films. The sales outfit is now talking to buyers about the remaining rights, including North America, at IDFA this week.

The film follows a teen with a passion to dance who struggles against the disapproval of his family. It was made with support from Zdf/Arte, yes Docu and Ebs. North American rights are still available.

First Hand Film...

I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but I can often spend hours upon hours trawling through iTunes looking for new movies to buy… Usually I’ll randomly come across a title I haven’t seen in years and use the “Cast & Crew” links to make my way down the rabbit hole to the more obscure side of Apple’s digital movie service.

Now whilst many will decry that iTunes is a terrible VOD service due to Apple’s desire to lock its audience to their platforms, if you have an Apple TV or iPad be aware – there are some truly obscure films hidden away in the depths of the vast collection of movies. Some of which have been made available in the UK for the first time since VHS and a Lot that have been added to the service in their original uncut form!

So, with...

James Schamus — screenwriter, professor and Focus Features CEO — travelled to Ramallah last month with philosopher Slavoj Zizek to give a series of talks to young filmmakers and students, including those from the Jenin Freedom Theater. At Guernica, Schamus writes about the event, including his use of Adorno as a teaching tool and a visit to a rehearsal of the Freedom Theater’s upcoming open-air production of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

Here’s Schamus’s opening for the piece, titled “How I Spent My Summer Vacation, or Adorno in Ramallah.”

A Friday afternoon in the village of Bil’in is quite an experience, especially if, like me, you’ve spent the previous couple of days hanging out in Tel Aviv talking about movies. Basically, the villagers and a hundred or two additional Israeli supporters and internationals have gathered every Friday for the past six years. They walk down to the...

Documentarist – Istanbul Documentary Days, Turkey’s largest documentary film festival, was held for the fourth time from May 31 to June 5, 2011. The festival has been garnering more attention internationally and widening the scope of its programme every year. The result of prodigious efforts undertaken by the founders as well as a large team of young people who are mainly university students, Documentarist is organized under the auspices of the Eurasia Art Collective (Ask) and is activist in its inclinations. This year’s festival was comprised of various sections focusing on such themes as environmentalism, music, anthropology and the post-communist era.

The World We Consume section of the festival included films with striking insights into some of the most important environmental issues of our times. “There Once Was an Island” (2010), directed by

Briar March, tells in a poignant manner the story of people of Takuu, a tiny low-lying atoll in the South Western Pacific.

Anchor Bay will release the controversial political film Miral directed by Julian Schnabel (Before Night Falls) and starring Freida Pinto (You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger), Hiam Abbass and Willem Dafoe (Antichrist) on Blu-ray and DVD on July 12.

Freida Pinto stars in the controversial Miral.

A drama centered on an orphaned Palestinian girl (Pinto) growing up in the wake of Arab-Israeli war who finds herself drawn into the conflict, the 2010 movie was written by Israeli journalist Rula Jebreal (Schnabel’s girlfriend) and based on her 2010 novel of the same name .

The Arab-Israeli subject is always a controversial one and Miral didn’t arrives in the theaters in late March for it’s limited U.S. release without making some noise of its own. Initially rated R by the MPAA for “some violent content including a sexual assault,” it was later reclassified to PG-13 for “thematic material, and some violent...

Right on the heels of the West Bank killing of Miral's Juliano Mer-Khamis, here's another tragedy abroad for the globally-conscious community in Hollywood. (All five of them.)

Tim Hetherington, who produced pieces from Afghanistan for ABC News' Nightline before co-directing last year's Oscar-winning documentary Restrepo, has been killed in a mortar attack by Quaddafi forces in Misurata, Libya. Three photographers (American and British) were wounded in the attack, one of whom, Chris Hondros, passed away.

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Palestinian-Israeli actor, activist and theatre director with a global reputation

The Palestinian-Israeli actor Juliano Mer-Khamis, who has been shot dead at the age of 52, was a successful stage and screen performer, film-maker and activist, widely known for his work as the artistic director of the Freedom theatre in the refugee camp in the West Bank town of Jenin. Dedicated to equipping young Palestinians with the potent powers of art and self-expression, Juliano carved out a stage on which children could find their feet – and voice. The theatre's achievements have resonated around the world as a focal point of creativity against the odds.

In Israel, Juliano was a stage and television star. He was known abroad as a film actor, making his debut in the 1984 adaptation of John le Carré's The Little Drummer Girl, starring Diane Keaton, and his last role was in Julian Schnabel's Miral (2010), based on Rula Jebreal...

Hundreds of mourners gathered on Wednesday, April 6, to bid farewell to "Miral" actor Juliano Mer-Khamis after he was shot dead by a masked gunman. The Arab-Israeli star, a peace activist in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was buried next to his mother, Arna, in the Ramot Menashe cemetery in Israel. The 52-year-old was gunned down in the city of Jenin on Monday, April 4.

His funeral procession passed by the Jalameh crossing between Israel and the Northern West Bank before an emotional ceremony during which Israeli film director Udi Aloni paid tribute to Mer-Khamis in an emotional eulogy.

Fighting back tears, Aloni said, "I tried to write, but it was just a thousand words and tears all mixed together. So I'll just speak from my heart... People said you were Israeli in Palestine and a Palestinian in Israel. This is not true, you were a Palestinian in Palestine, you were a Jew...

Hundreds of mourners gathered on Wednesday to bid farewell to Miral actor Juliano Mer-khamis after he was shot dead by a masked gunman.

The Arab-Israeli star, a peace activist in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was buried next to his mother, Arna, in the Ramot Menashe cemetery in Israel. The 52 year old was gunned down in the city of Jenin on Monday.

His funeral procession passed by the Jalameh crossing between Israel and the Northern West Bank before an emotional ceremony during which Israeli film director Udi Aloni paid tribute to Mer-Khamis in an emotional eulogy.

Fighting back tears, Aloni said, "I tried to write, but it was just a thousand words and tears all mixed together. So I'll just speak from my heart...

"People said you were Israeli in Palestine and a Palestinian in Israel. This is not true, you were a Palestinian in Palestine, you were a Jew in Israel and most of all you were a human in every part of the world."

A former member of the Palestinian armed group, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, has reportedly been arrested in connection with the murder.

Filed under: Movie News, Cinematical

SXSW Audience Award winner 'Attack the Block' has been picked up for distribution by Sony Screen Gems.

Israeli actor, peace activist and star of 'Miral' Juliano Mer-Khamis was murdered in Jenin yesterday, right outside of the drama and cultural center he established in the Palestinian refugee camp. Mer-Khamis, the child of a Jewish mother and Palestinian father, had been receiving death threats because he was opposed to the military occupation of the region.

The MPAA isn't just urging authorities to go after people who download movies illegally -- now they've asked congress to help them eliminate "rogue sites" that share links to pirated movies and television shows or stream them without permission.

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Filed under: Movie News, Cinematical

SXSW Audience Award winner 'Attack the Block' has been picked up for distribution by Sony Screen Gems.

Israeli actor, peace activist and star of 'Miral' Juliano Mer-Khamis was murdered in Jenin yesterday, right outside of the drama and cultural center he established in the Palestinian refugee camp. Mer-Khamis, the child of a Jewish mother and Palestinian father, had been receiving death threats because he was opposed to the military occupation of the region.

The MPAA isn't just urging authorities to go after people who download movies illegally -- now they've asked congress to help them eliminate "rogue sites" that share links to pirated movies and television shows or stream them without permission.

Continue Reading...

Sad, sobering news: Israeli actor and peace activist Juliano Mer-Khamis, who played Seikh Saabah in Julian Schnabel and Rula Jebreal's Miral, was shot and killed by a masked gunman Monday. Worse still, the murder took place just outside his "Freedom Theater," a drama and culture center that he set up inside a Palestinian refugee camp. Said a Miral rep, "Rula and Julian were very shocked at this tragic news." [New York Post]...

Miral is a little indie film that came out of Israel in the last six months to an explosion of controversy. Set over four generations of a Palestinian family and is based on a novel of the same name. The film focuses on the aftermath of the Deir Yassin Massacre when 55 surviving children of a massacred town were abandoned in Jerusalem. A Palestinian woman established an orphanage for them and their numbers swelled to over 2000 in a mere six months. The story of the film picks up with a newly orphaned girl dropped off. Coming of age stuff apparently ensues, to decidedly mixed reviews.

Of course, that's not where the controversy comes from. The United Nations had a special screening of the film back in March over the protests of the American Jewish Committee, which declared that the film was one-sided and biased against Israel. I haven't seen the film,...

Director Julian Schnabel and his partner Rula Jebreal have expressed their sadness after Miral actor Juliano Mer-khamis was gunned down in the Northern West Bank on Monday.

The Arab-Israeli star, who was a vocal critic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was shot by a masked gunman in the town of Jenin, close to the drama school and community theatre he ran.

The actor was rushed to a local hospital and pronounced dead on arrival.

Schnabel and Jebreal were stunned to learn about the passing of Mer-Khamis, who they worked with on 2010 political movie Miral, and have now spoken of their grief.

A representative for the film tells the New York Post's gossip column Page Six, "Rula and Julian were very shocked at this tragic news."

Miral was directed by Schnabel and based on Jebreal's book of the same name. The film starred Freida Pinto as a conflicted Palestinian girl growing up in Israel.

Actor and political activist Juliano Mer-Khamis was gunned down in the Northern West Bank on Monday, April 4. He was 52. The Arab-Israeli star, who most recently appeared in "Miral", was shot by a masked gunman about 150 feet from the Freedom Theater, the drama school and community theater Mer-Khamis ran in Jenin.

He was rushed to a local hospital and pronounced dead on arrival. As the son of a Jewish mum and an Arab father, Mer-Khamis was a vocal critic against Israel's policies toward the Palestinians. His theater, which he opened in 2006, drew criticism from some Palestinians who viewed it as a threat to their traditions.

Mer-Khamis starred in several Israeli films as well as the 1984 U.S. film "The Little Drummer Girl".

Actor and political activist Juliano Mer-khamis was gunned down in the Northern West Bank on Monday. He was 52.

The Arab-Israeli star, who most recently appeared in Miral, was shot by a masked gunman about 150 feet (45 metres) from the Freedom Theater, the drama school and community theatre Mer-Khamis ran in Jenin.

He was rushed to a local hospital and pronounced dead on arrival.

As the son of a Jewish mum and an Arab father, Mer-Khamis was a vocal critic against Israel's policies toward the Palestinians. His theatre, which he opened in 2006, drew criticism from some Palestinians who viewed it as a threat to their traditions.

Mer-Khamis starred in several Israeli films as well as the 1984 U.S. film The Little Drummer Girl.

Israeli (and Palestinian) actors, directors, and artists all mourn today the assassination of actor, director, and peace activist Juliano Mer-Khamis. Born in 1958 in the Arab city of Nazareth (North of Israel) to a Jewish mother and an Arab father, Mer-Khamis embodied in his life, as well as in his death, the division and the conflict between the two people sharing this bloody land. Appearing in numerous films and plays, he is most known to the international crowd in his appearances in movies directed by Amos Gitai (Kippur, Yom-Yom, Kedma). Mer-Khamis was a controversial figure in the Israeli society, never stifling himself from expressing his political views, as unacceptable as they may be. Following his mother's footsteps, he too became a political activist, raising his voice against the occupation of Palestinians, and for human rights in Arab culture. A theater for children his late mother managed in the Palestinian city...

In the midst of our excitement about the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, we just learned some very sad breaking news out of the Middle East. Filmmaker Juliano Mer Khamis, whose film Arna's Children shared the Best Documentary Award at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, was assassinated today by masked gunmen in a refugee camp in the West Bank, located near his Freedom Theater in Jenin. As reported in 972mag.com: 'Mer Khamis, son of a Palestinian father and a Jewish mother, has faced threats since forever: From conservatives in the camp who took a strong dislike to the theatre's liberal repertoire and casting of both men and women, both boys and girls; from nationalists who saw him as an agent of the occupation, a promoter of normalization; and from just about every Israeli who commented on any news piece covering him and his activity.' Still from Arna's Children Tff Executive Director...

TORONTO -- Political documentaries about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were the big winners of jury awards as the Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival went into its closing weekend. Israeli director Yoav Shamir picked up the trophy for best international documentary feature for "Checkpoint", a portrait of Palestinians facing hostile Israeli soldiers as they crossed into Israel. And the FIPRESCI (international critics) award for best first documentary feature was given to Juliano Mer Khamis and Danniel Danniel for their film "Arna's Children", about an Israeli woman bravely running a small theater group for Palestinian children, some of whom go on to join the struggle for Palestinian independence.