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Leading Australian producers Cathy Rodda (“Unfinished Sky”) and Lisa Duff (“Last Cab to Darwin”) are joining Anupam Sharma’s English and Hindi-language “Honour” as the film project heads for Film Bazaar in Goa, India.

“Honour” is a social thriller based on true events and is the story of a bride who goes to Australia with a million dreams which soon turn into a nightmare of dowry and domestic abuse. Trapped in a web of deceit, greed, visa regulations, and pressures to protect the honour of her family, herself and the Indian community in Australia, the woman decides to run when she gets pregnant and is forced to abort

The film is currently in final stages of development. It is expected to shoot in Victoria state.

Forum Films has acquired distribution rights for Australia, New Zealand, Fiji Islands and Papua New Guinea with Janine Barnes also serving as producer. Rodda will...

Producer Cathy Rodda has joined Film Victoria as one of its development and investment managers.

Rodda, who started on Monday, will work across various programs including production investment in narrative and documentary features, transmedia and adult and children's TV.

She brings to the role considerable industry knowledge and experience as the producer of feature films including Unfinished Sky, Iron Sky and At World's End.

Most recently she had been developing and producing projects with Norm Wilkinson at Visionquest Entertainment including Bullets for the Dead, a Zombie Western which marks the feature directing debut of Michael Du-Shane from a script he co-wrote with Joshua C Birch.

In other news, the agency is collaborating with the Melbourne International Film Festival in calling for expressions of interest for this year.s 37ºSouth: PostScript & Direct event.

Film Victoria is sponsoring up to 10 Victorian writers with polished feature film scripts that will "wow the market and excite an audience.

Aaron Pedersen and Mark Leonard Winter have been added to the cast of The Fear of Darkness, writer-director Chris Fitchett.s supernatural thriller which starts shooting on March 6 on the Gold Coast.

They join the already announced cast of Maeve Dermody, Penelope Mitchell and Damien Garvey.

Mitchell (Hemlock Grove, The Vampire Diaries) will play Skye Williams, a patient in a psychiatric clinic who is accused of a gruesome murder. Dermody (Serangoon Road, Griff the Invisible) is Dr Sarah Faithfull, an empathetic psychiatrist who believes there is more to the case.

Pedersen, who played the lead in Ivan Sen.s Mystery Road and is a regular in the ABC Jack Irish telemovies,. will portray Dr Nicholas Trengrove, a criminal psychologist who tries desperately to ensure that those around him stay grounded and not surrender to any imagined horrors in the dark.

Winter, who appears in Craig Monahan.s upcoming drama Healing...

Maeve Dermody, Penelope Mitchell and Damien Garvey have been cast in The Fear of Darkness, a supernatural thriller from writer-director Chris Fitchett which starts shooting March 6 on the Gold Coast.

Dermody (Serangoon Road, Griff the Invisible) will play a brilliant young psychiatrist who is forced to confront the dark creature that dwells deep within her when she investigates the disappearance of a female university student.

Mitchell, who was a regular in the Us TV series Hemlock Grove and appears in The Vampire Diaries, plays a patient in a psychiatric clinic who is accused of a gruesome crime.

Damien Garvey (Rake, Network Ten.s upcoming Secrets & Lies) will portray a cop who investigates the disappearance. Casting of two other key roles is due to be confirmed shortly.

The project was developed through Screen Queensland.s low budget feature film initiative. The producer is Mark Overett (Iron Sky, Separation City,. Unfinished Sky...

Writer-director Chris Fitchett made his first two features, Blood Money and Desolation Angels, in quick succession.

He was offered a few roles after the second film but embarked on a successful career running film and TV bodies.

Now, 31 years after Desolation Angels, he is getting ready to write and direct his third feature, The Fear of Darkness, a supernatural thriller about a brilliant young psychiatrist who is forced to confront the dark creature that dwells deep within her unconscious when she investigates the disappearance of a female university student.

Produced by Mark Overett (Iron Sky, Separation City, Unfinished Sky) and supported by Screen Queensland.s low budget feature film initiative, the film is due to shoot on the Gold Coast in January.

Fitchett, who teaches film and TV at Bond University, is finalising the casting. Gary Hamilton.s Arclight will handle international sales and Greenlight Releasing is the Australian distributor.

Zombie Western Bullets for the Dead is due to roll in Queensland in July, the first in a slate of low-budget genre films from a new joint venture between Cathy Overett.s Brisbane-based Cathartic Pictures and UK sales agent Stealth Media Group.

Overett told If the aim is to produce two or three films a year, each budgeted at $3 million, using the 40 per cent Australian producer tax offset, which Stealth will sell internationally. The $2 million Bullets for the Dead marks the feature debut of Australian writers-directors Joshua C. Birch and Michael Du-Shane, developed from a 3-minute film, 26 Bullets Dead, which they shot in 2011 when they were students at the Griffith Film School.

The plot revolves around a bounty hunter (Christopher Sommers) who escorts a fiery young woman (Kathryn Beck) and her gang of misfits to the sheriff. En route he discovers the remains of a massacre and rescues its sole survivor,...

Family adventure film Nim's Island 2, starring Bindi Irwin, has begun shooting on the Gold Coast.

The film also stars Us actor Matthew Lillard (The Descendants, Scooby Doo), who plays marine scientist Jack, the father of Nim (Bindi Irwin), as well as local actors John Waters (Looking Through the Glass Onion, Offspring), Toby Wallace (Surviving Georgia, Neighbours), Nathan Derrick (Rush, Bed of Roses), Sebastian Gregory (Neighbours, Accidents Happen) and Jack Pearson (Winners & Losers).

The original Nim's Island grossed $US48 million in North America and almost $6.2 million at the Australian box office. While it was shot in Queensland, it did not qualify as an Australian production, unlike the sequel which is now underway.

Nim's Island was a far bigger production, starring Jodi Foster, and was distributed by Universal. The sequel will be distributed in Australia by Pinnacle Films, which has specialised in limited theatrical releases, while international distribution is being handled by Walden Entertainment.

Comedy sci-fi feature Iron Sky has been selected in the Panorama Special section of next month's Berlin International Film Festival.

The film, about Nazis who fled to the Moon in 1945 before returning to claim the Earth in 2018, marks the first Australian-Finnish-German co-production.

Australian producer Cathy Overett said: .We are incredibly excited that Iron Sky has been selected for Berlin. It is recognition of the incredible vision and tenacity of our director Timo Vuorensola and of the importance international co-productions play in the Australian film industry..

The film has relied on an innovative financing structure which included crowd-funding during production. It is still raising finance after facing blizzards in Germany and floods in Queensland during production.

"The adverse weather conditions mean we are still raising some extra funds to finish and deliver the film, so it.s still not too late for our Australian fans to support the film. All they...

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, DVD rental company Quickflix has published its list of Australia’s favourite romance films, in which Muriel’s Wedding is the highest ranked local title, sitting in the 108th position.

“Perhaps [the fact that the favourite Australian romance is a film from 1994] is evidence that Australian audiences are craving more romantic fare in local films. The Australian film industry no longer needs to prove it can produce world-class drama, but it might be time for us to show off our sincere, comic, and romantic side once again,” Quickflix online editor and film critic Simon Miraudo told Encore.

“Although recent pictures like Samson & Delilah, Somersault and Unfinished Sky are all popular, our members seem to have a soft spot for the lighthearted romances of the 1990s,” added Miraudo.

In terms of films added to subscribers’ rental lists, the most popular local title was Baz Luhrman’s Australia (2008), which also ranked 22nd on the overall list of movie romances added to users’ queues.

In an era where everything but the kitchen sink is moving online, is there much strength left in traditional forms of outdoor advertising? Hansika Bhagani found that the humble movie and TV poster is still very much alive.

Promotional posters may be as old as the moving image itself, but this old marketing and artistic tradition has not lost its relevance. Ahmed Salama, creative director at Dlshs Film says key art is as important as it ever was: “Besides the trailer, the poster is the primary representation a screen project has in the physical world. People think it’s just a poster, but it’s an immensely powerful thing. In some cases it can even add to the entire narrative of a film outside of the cinema”.

Along with Salama’s company (The Combination, Cedar Boys), there is a relatively small circle of creatives that produce most film key art in Australia.

Although much attention has been paid in recent years to video on demand and DVDs as a way of bringing the world closer together through film, there has also been innovation on the theatrical front that has some interesting implications for expanding the availability of foreign fare in the U.S.

Once exclusively the province of film festivals and the handful of distributors that specialize in releasing foreign films on the big screen, two companies have seized the opportunity this summer to approach foreign film from a different perspective -- by bunching them together and showing them at locales that might not have access to them otherwise.

Just this past weekend, the Joel Edgerton-Radha Mitchell adoption drama "The Waiting City" opened at the Cosford Cinema in Coral Gables, Florida, the third film featured in the first season of Emerging Pictures' 2010 USA-Australian Film Showcase, a series of Outback-based...

Adam Sandler's comedy vehicle You Don't Mess With The Zohan has topped the Australian box office chart. The Judd Apatow project knocked Sex And The City into second place. Jack Black's comedy animation Kung Fu Panda climbs to number three, while Prince Caspian slips to second. Elsewhere, historical drama Mongol enters the top ten at eight, while Peter Duncan's Unfinished Sky moves up to tenth. The top ten in full: 1. (-) You Don't (more)...