Binger Filmlab

Binger Filmmakers News May 2008

• Production company Augustus Film of writer/producer Bero Beyer is one of the co-producers of the Cannes selected Salt of This Sea by Palestine director Annemarie Jacir. The film is screening in the Un Certain Regard competition.

• Reinier Selen of Rinkel Film & TV Productions will represent the Netherlands at the European Film Promotion (EFP)’s PRODUCERS ON THE MOVE event at Cannes. Selen produced amongst other Godforsaken and Off Screen (both by Pieter Kuijpers) and Blood Brothers (Arno Dierickx) which will be screened at the Cannes Market 2008.

• Niv Klainer starts the shooting of his film Bena at this moment. Bena is produced by Marek Rozenbaum of Transfax Film Productions and French co-producer EZ Films and is Niv’s first feature, following his short film Mister Kurtzweil is dead, screened in the Cinema du Monde section in Cannes 2006.

• Binger project The White Elephant by writer Ayeesha Menon is currently been filmed in India. Menon is thrilled her first feature film will be made. “Although we have had to cut down on the budget  we have some wonderful actors and a very dedicated team”. The film is directed by Aijiz Khan and Menon will be his script supervisor.

• This August psychological thriller Black Water - written by Elbert van Strien and Paulo van Vliet and to be directed by Van Strien - will be shot in Belgium and The Netherlands. In Black Water the nine-year-old Lisa discovers her sinister new friend is the ghost of the dead twin of Lisa’s mother. Then Lisa’s father also begins to suspect his wife of hiding a terrible secret, resulting in deadly consequences…. The feature will be produced by Claudia Brandt and Elbert van Strien for Accento Films in co-production with Nino Lombardo of Prime Time.

• ?Uruguayan and Belgian co-production Masangeles by Beatriz Flores Silva has had its successful commercial release in Uruguay on the 2nd of this May. The film is about the influential politician Aurelio Saavedra (43) who has to take his illegitimate daughter Masangeles (7) home when her mother commits suicide.  Dropped in a household of egoistic madmen, Masangeles quickly understands that her only chance of surviving will be adapting to the situation.

• Nicolas Provost has a retrospective of his short films in De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam. Till the first of June films such as Plot Point - a film lasting fifteen minutes, shot entirely with hidden cameras around Times Square, New York – will be screened. Provost’ Binger project The Invader has received funding in Belgium and is to be shot in 2009.

• Also positive funding news for Michael Reynders Roskam (The Fields), Sarah Lambert (Red Dress) and Jennifer Perrott (Dust of Life); they’ve received funding from their national film funds.

• Short film Tasha by Matthew A. Brown was selected for the African Short Films Competition of the 18th African, Asian and Latin American Film Festival in Milano, and is in competition of the 31st Children's and Youth Film Competition of the 54th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Brown is currently working on two Binger feature projects: Leaving the Cape (Script Development and Directors Coaching Programme 2005) and Flawed Life (Directors Programme 2008) as part of the South African The Commandments project.

• Documentary Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman by Binger advisor Jennifer Fox can be seen as a series this May and June on the Sundance Channel in the US.

• Párpados Azules, the feature film by Mexican brothers Ernesto (director) and Carlos Contreras (writer) still wins – after the premiere in Cannes last year and The World Cinema Special Jury Prize at Sundance – many awards amongst others the Signi Award for Best Film at the Alba Film Festival, Special Mention at the Miami Film Festival and the Ariel Award (Mexican Oscar) for Best Feature Film.

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