I am thrilled that SydneysBuzz has found a home with IndieWIRE
.
Since Cannes, I have been blogging on IndieWIRE and have had such a great experience sharing and talking with colleagues Eugene Hernandez, Brian Brooks, Eric Kohn, my favorite L.A. friends Anne Thompson and Todd McCarthy. I am so honored to find myself installed in that legendary land of New York indies, a place I’ve always admired. My position here is so unique with no one specifically telling me what to write, or how to spend my working hours. I am free to follow my instinct. And I think the instinct has become engrained in me to follow the trends and developments of the international marketplace.
So come over to www.SydneysBuzz.com and see my blog on IndieWIRE
.
Showing posts with label Cannes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cannes. Show all posts
Monday, June 7, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Cannes Countdown: 24 Days to Go: Hyde Park
Its US distribution deal made in Sundance with The Weinstein Co. stirred up lots of interest. But of greater interest is the international sales agent who has already sold in in Italy to CDI, the Middle East to Front Row and Australia to Palace.
Ashok Amritraj’s Hyde Park Entertainment's commitment to the global film industry, to develop, finance and produce cross-cultural commercial films, continues to grow in Asia and the Middle East with the appointment of Jason Mirch to head its Abu Dhabi office Imagenation and Yeo Chang in Singapore to manage operations of Hyde Park Imagenation Singapore, along with finding and developing projects in Asia. Hyde Park Imagenation aims to create up to 20 features that will “open a window on Middle Eastern and Asian culture, enabling audiences around the world to look in and appreciate the region’s rich and increasingly dynamic heritage” states Imagenation Abu Dhabi COO Stefan Brunner. Mirch and Chang will work alongside Hyde Park International president Mimi Steinbauer, Hyde Park executive vice-president Patrick Aiello, and Imagenation Abu Dhabi COO Stefan Brunner.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
One of My Favorite Films In Cannes
Not that I saw so many films in Cannes. But this Competition feature "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo" by Spanish director Isabel Coixet remains with me and so many others have already disappeared from my memory. This story of love, vengeance and mourning in the Japanese megacity brings to mind themes from "Last Tango In Paris", the place of sex in the face of death, eros and thanatos and our fragile humanity in dealing with life as survivors.
...Sydney
Thanks to Cinema Without Borders for this account of the film by Coixet:
Coixet recalls the genesis of her film: "Films, like tunes or poems, spring from strange encounters, from odd associations that can be completely incongruent but full of magic. In the case of Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, I 'saw'the story (I don’t want to sound like some kind of visionary, but this is how I felt it happen) at Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. I suppose the smells of fresh tuna, seaweed and oysters, the shouting of the auctioneers, the scraping and shuffling of thousands of fish boxes dragged across the market floor and the peculiar effects of the fluorescent lighting at four o’clock in the morning had a great deal to do with it. Or the stony face of the girl neatly hosing the floor who was so adamant in her refusal to let me photograph her, showing a determination that is unusual for Japan."
"I knew I would tell this story of a woman – a hard, solitary, mysterious, wounded woman – who leads a double life: a fish market worker who cleans, hauls crates and occasionally carries out jobs as a hit-woman. And the story of a man, whose obsession are sounds, and who is silently in love with that woman, even though he knows that the very most he can expect from her is the sound of her breath, the sound of her heels down an empty alley and her conversations during her meetings with a man, of Spanish origin, towards whom she experiences an attraction that endangers the life she has led up until then as a loner. To this initial idea, my “vision” or whatever you want to call it, I added the story of a man who is unable to cope with the loss of his daughter, and is on a blind search for revenge that eventually leads to a tragic end."
"This is how Map of the Sounds of Tokyo was born. I was also influenced by the fascination I feel for contemporary Japanese culture and the atmosphere I find in the novels of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto as well as by my unconcealed addiction to wasabi and the almost tangible vibrations emanating from Tokyo during the night: a mixture of expectation, mystery, darkness and tenderness that leaves an indelible mark."
In 2005, Isabel Coixet was a member of the 18-filmmaker team - which also included Gus Van Sant, Walter Salles, and the Coen brothers – which produced the collective project "Paris, Je T’aime",in which each director explored a different Paris arrondissement, or district.
...Sydney
Thanks to Cinema Without Borders for this account of the film by Coixet:
Coixet recalls the genesis of her film: "Films, like tunes or poems, spring from strange encounters, from odd associations that can be completely incongruent but full of magic. In the case of Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, I 'saw'the story (I don’t want to sound like some kind of visionary, but this is how I felt it happen) at Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. I suppose the smells of fresh tuna, seaweed and oysters, the shouting of the auctioneers, the scraping and shuffling of thousands of fish boxes dragged across the market floor and the peculiar effects of the fluorescent lighting at four o’clock in the morning had a great deal to do with it. Or the stony face of the girl neatly hosing the floor who was so adamant in her refusal to let me photograph her, showing a determination that is unusual for Japan."
"I knew I would tell this story of a woman – a hard, solitary, mysterious, wounded woman – who leads a double life: a fish market worker who cleans, hauls crates and occasionally carries out jobs as a hit-woman. And the story of a man, whose obsession are sounds, and who is silently in love with that woman, even though he knows that the very most he can expect from her is the sound of her breath, the sound of her heels down an empty alley and her conversations during her meetings with a man, of Spanish origin, towards whom she experiences an attraction that endangers the life she has led up until then as a loner. To this initial idea, my “vision” or whatever you want to call it, I added the story of a man who is unable to cope with the loss of his daughter, and is on a blind search for revenge that eventually leads to a tragic end."
"This is how Map of the Sounds of Tokyo was born. I was also influenced by the fascination I feel for contemporary Japanese culture and the atmosphere I find in the novels of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto as well as by my unconcealed addiction to wasabi and the almost tangible vibrations emanating from Tokyo during the night: a mixture of expectation, mystery, darkness and tenderness that leaves an indelible mark."
In 2005, Isabel Coixet was a member of the 18-filmmaker team - which also included Gus Van Sant, Walter Salles, and the Coen brothers – which produced the collective project "Paris, Je T’aime",in which each director explored a different Paris arrondissement, or district.
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