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IDFA Forum (November 17-20), the co-production and co-financing market of International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), has unveiled the line-up for its 2024 edition, with projects from Aliona van der Horst and Eva Mulad among the selection.

IDFA Forum consists of the Forum Pitch, Producer Connection, Rough Cut Presentations, and IDFA DocLab Forum strands. This year’s 55-strong selection is dominated by women filmmakers across all formats, according to the organisers.

Among attendees in the Forum Pitch and Producer Connection is Russian-Dutch director Aliona van der Horst, whose Gerlach (co-directed with Luuk Bouwman) won the IDFA award for best Dutch film in...

Morgana Studios, ReachStar and ReDefine Originals are partnering on the animated feature “Diamante,” set on the lush Caribbean Island of the Dominican Republic.

The film will be directed by Mathieu Ratthé with the screenplay written by Ratthé and Leticia Tonos Paniagua from an original idea by Claudio Lluberes.

Animation will be handled by ReDefine Originals, which is part of Dneg. The producers are casting.

“Diamante” follows young Luisito’s dream of becoming a pro baseball player. He is crushed by his fear of people until he discovers a mysterious power, leading him on a journey alongside an unlikely companion, to learn the true value of friendship, family, and resilience.

Producing are Ratthé, Caroline Desmarais and Steven Thibault for Reachstar, and Miguel Cabañas, Verónica Buide, Claudio Lluberes and Daysi Cruz for Morgana Studios. Executive producing for ReDefine Originals are Greg Gavanski, John Harvey and Daniel Krech.

“‘Diamante’ aims to highlight the...

Awards are among the most lucrative film festival prizes in the world.

Melbourne International Film Festival (Miff) has revealed it will award more than $200,000 in cash prizes at its upcoming edition and has unveiled the nominees for its inaugural First Nations Film Creative Award.

The prize pool, spread across six award categories, is now one of the most lucrative on the film festival circuit. Nearly half is allocated to the Bright Horizons Competition, featuring first and second-time directors, with $95,300 awarded to the winning filmmaker. Those competing for this year’s prize were announced earlier this month.

The festival, which runs...

The Melbourne International Film Festival has confirmed that it will provide $202,000 will go to the winner of its Bright Horizons competition for features by first- and second-time directors. Bragging rights to being the richest film competition in the country previously belonged to the smaller CinefestOZ festival in West Australia, which follows later in August.

The Melbourne festival (in cinemas Aug. 3-20) has this year added two significant prizes: the inaugural First Nations Film Creative Award in collaboration with Kearney Group, and the return of the Blackmagic Design Australian Innovation Award, worth $47,500 recognizing an outstanding Australian creative within a film playing in the Melbourne 2023 program.

Winners across long-form awards categories will be announced at Melbourne’s closing night gala on Aug. 19, These will include the juried prizes and the Miff Audience Award.

The First Nations Film Creative Award supports First Nations talent and storytelling with the recipient awarded a $13,500 cash prize and $16,900 worth of financial services.

This Quantum Leap review contains spoilers.

Quantum Leap Episode 6

“What a Disaster,” the sixth installment of the Quantum Leap continuation series, carries extra baggage. First, the pilot switch: originally, Dr. Ben Song’s (Raymond Lee) leap to San Francisco was slated to be the focus of the pilot episode. Ben finds himself in the body of John Harvey, a middle-aged man decked out in high-waisted jeans, dad sneakers, and a windbreaker, who has just been asked by his wife, Naomi Harvey (Jewel Staite), for a divorce.

She’s taken him to a public spot to break the news: a bar in San Francisco filled with Giants and Athletics fans who are counting down the moments before the first pitch of the third game of the 1989 World Series. Even without the help of Addison or Ziggy, Ben quickly realizes they are in the epicenter of one of the strongest earthquakes in American history.

In Rhian Skirving and John Harvey’s documentary Off Country, premiering at the Melbourne International Film Festival (Miff), Indigenous teenagers navigate exams, social dramas and maintaining meaningful connections to home while at boarding school.

Every year, around 3,000 Indigenous students receive scholarships to attend some of Australia’s most prestigious boarding schools. It is an immense opportunity, but it also means they must leave their homes and communities. Over the course of a year, Off Country follows several such students, who, despite hailing from distinct nations and having vastly different circumstances, each share a commitment to doing themselves and their families proud–no matter the difficulties.

Supported by the Miff Premiere Fund, the film captures the tremendous pressures these students face – from academics and extracurriculars to sustaining ties with kin and culture, all of which are further complicated by the unfolding Covid-19 pandemic.

The post ‘Off Country’ (Trailer) appeared first on If Magazine.

Jen Peedom’s River and Ben Lawrence’s Ithaka add to the already strong contingent of local films bound for August’s Melbourne International Film Festival, which unveiled its full program today.

Miff 2021 will include a hefty 283 titles, including 199 features, 84 shorts and 10 Xr experiences. Among them are 40 world premieres; the most in the festival’s 69 year history.

Some 62 of those films will be available nationally via Miff Play, the festival’s online screening platform, with the festival reimagined this year as a hybrid event.

“This year, Miff continues to evolve — to meet the moment, and to meet audiences where they are,” said artistic director Al Cossar.

“What will not change is the extraordinary lineup of cinematic adventures, from home and afar, waiting for them. These are anticipated festival blockbusters, experimentations, breakthrough discoveries, and a huge lineup of incredible Australian talent. We will again share a world of cinema, reignited, to...

Screen Australia and Nitv have unveiled the six projects that will share in more than $600,000 of production funding under the No Ordinary Black short film initiative.

Aimed at bringing First Nations stories to the screen, No Ordinary Black is run in partnership Screen Nsw, Screen Territory, Screen Queensland and Screenwest.

The program brought together eight teams for a virtual development workshop in July last year, from which six successful projects were selected to go into production for Nitv.

Screen Australia’s CEO Graeme Mason said the agency was proud to support the creators in taking the next step in their careers.

“Each of the six teams has created the kind of bold and ambitious stories that are exactly what we are looking for, with captivating scripts that explore a range of themes, including family, identity, childhood, belonging, and adventure,” he said.

Nitv head of commissioning and programming Kyas Hepworth said...

Screen Australia has announced nearly $2 million of production funding for two documentaries through the Commissioned program and eight through the Producer Program.

The projects include series Could You Survive on the Breadline? exploring financial disadvantage for Sbs; The Secret World of Fungi, a documentary for IMAX; and a series investigating racism in Australia called Unheard.

There’s also Medalia Productions and Sweetshop & Green’s feature documentary Prisoner X, coincidentally about the same man – and with the same title – as the narrative series Fremantle Australia announced it is developing with Stephen Corvini and Israeli production company Abot Hameiri.

Screen Australia’s head of content Sally Caplan said: “We’re very pleased to support these documentaries that will shine a light on issues including mental health and wellbeing, racism and the natural environment, and are sure to spark conversations. We’re excited to back the first ever Israeli documentary co-production with compelling feature Prisoner X,...

Fifteen Indigenous and culturally and linguistically diverse (Cald) practitioners are set to participate in Cinespace Inc’s Package to Pitch program, an online masterclass on pitching into the market.

Selected by a culturally diverse panel, they include: Amal Awad, Alan Nguyen, Ana Tiwary, Orson Dijle, Serah Nathan, Karl Fernando, Eliza Matengu, Vonne Patiag, Theresa Gunarso, Jeremy Nguyen, Divya Vaman, Kim Ho, Michelle Ny, Sam Calafiore and Eva Justine Torkkola. Each has a pilot TV script they’re ready to pitch.

The program, supported via the Screenrights Cultural Fund, has been designed and facilitated by filmmaker John Kassab to help bridge the gap between outstanding emerging diverse creatives and the broader industry.

To be held online in February and March, the program will feature talks with a range of industry heavy hitters including Tony Ayres, Laura Waters, Michael McMahon, Donna Chang, Robert Connolly, Rachel Okine, Genevieve Chang, Ian Collie, Katherine Slattery,...

Robert Connolly.

Arenamedia and a broad coalition of industry players today called on the Federal Government to create an Innovation Fund to support new and emerging talent and diverse creative voices.

Managed by Screen Australia, the fund would also explore innovative approaches to creating and distributing new work for Australian and global audiences.

“Diversity would be a key guiding principle of this fund, addressing areas of our national storytelling that have been neglected on our screens and remain under-represented,” Arenamedia says in its submission to the government’s options paper review, co-signed by 13 production companies and distributors plus filmmakers Jub Clerc and Daniel Nettheim.

While there is no dollar figure attached to the initiative, it would be funded by a combination of increased government support and other funds proposed by the options paper.

Crucially, the submission envisions the fund would be freed from market-based decision making that attempts to anticipate what is commercial,...

Netflix have recently been making some serious inroads when it comes to attempting to establish themselves as players in the blockbuster business, recruiting one of the genre’s biggest names in Michael Bay and handing him $150 million to deliver his signature brand of pyrotechnic mayhem with 6 Underground, which was watched by over 80 million people in the first four weeks it was available.

The streaming service are coming off an even bigger hit following the release of Chris Hemsworth’s Extraction, which generated massive buzz and quickly became Netflix’s most-watched original movie ever, and looks poised to launch the company’s first major film franchise. Given their seemingly endless cash reserves and desire to play Hollywood at their own game, Netflix have no intentions of stopping there, and next year looks set to deliver their most-high profile blockbuster yet.

Red Notice will see the world’s biggest movie star head to streaming,...

‘Out of Range’. (Photo: Alexander Lloyd)

The projects produced under Sbs’s Short-Form Content Initiative will premiere on Sbs on Demand in September as part of the broadcaster’s inaugural Short Film Festival.

Run in partnership with Film Victoria, Screen Queensland, Screen Tasmania, Screenwest and the South Australian Film Corporation, the Short-Form Content Initiative sought to back projects from emerging creatives from backgrounds currently underrepresented in the screen industry.

The festival will showcase 14 films – four scripted and 10 unscripted – that feature Australian creatives from underrepresented societies, including those from multicultural, Indigenous and Lgbtiq+ communities, and those living with disabilities.

Sbs director of TV and online content Marshall Heald said: “Our Short-Form Content Initiative announced last year was a promise from Sbs to encourage and celebrate emerging local talent, and we’re thrilled that the initiative has culminated into the Sbs Short Film Festival for Sbs On Demand. These films represent Australia...

Most of us know Betty Grable from the famous pin-up copied by the cover artwork for this release; by 1944 Ms. Grable was Fox’s biggest earner, and the Armed Force’s most popular daydream babe both back home and at the front. This movie pulled in the multitudes, even though Betty doesn’t even play a model suitable for pin-up duty! But just imagine: in almost any town during wartime with a war industry somewhere nearby, movie theaters played around the clock, with sold-out audiences, to accommodate swing shift defense workers.

Pin Up Girl

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1944 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 84 min. / Street Date June 18, 2019 / Available from Twilight Time Movies / 29.95

Starring: Betty Grable, John Harvey, Martha Raye, Joe E. Brown, Eugene Pallette, Dorothea Kent, Dave Willock.

Cinematography: Ernest Palmer

Choreography: Hermes Pan

Original Music: Song Score Ð James V. Monaco (Music)/Mack Gordon (Lyrics); Charles Henderson, Emil Newman (Musical Directors)

Written by Robert Ellis,...

Robert Bloch and Milton Subotsky may have helped to codify the Giallo in this murder thriller but the results are not up to even the shaky standards of Amicus. That said, horror fans are going to flock to get their hands on a big color & ‘scope release that’s gone missing for decades. It’s a significant ‘save’ by Kino Lorber.

The Psychopath

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1966 / Color / 2:35 widescreen Techniscope / 82 min. / Street Date April 10, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Patrick Wymark, Margaret Johnston, John Standing, Alexander Knox, Judy Huxtable, Don Borisenko, Thorley Walters, Robert Crewdson, Harold Lang, Gina Gianelli, Greta Farrer, John Harvey.

Cinematography: John Wilcox

Film Editor: Oswald Hafenrichter

Art Direction: Bill Constable

Original Music: Elisabeth Lutyens

Written by Robert Bloch

Produced by Max Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky

Directed by Freddie Francis

A look at the cast and crew of The Psychopath raises one’s hopes. Good actors Patrick...