"The more the merrier," he says. "The point was to create opportunities for people who may not have them. "Once independent film had a place where the work could be seen, suddenly the merchants came. With them the celebrities came, then the paparazzi - and suddenly it began to take on a whole new tone," explains Redford. Yvonne Murray speaks with Redford about Sundance for BBC.

Citing security concerns, organizers of the Rotterdam Film Festival called off Sunday's screening of a short film by murdered Dutch moviemaker Theo van Gogh that has outraged some Muslims. Anthony Deutsch reports for A.P.

The Oscars ignore him, he was dropped from the Mystic River poster and people turned his career into a party game. As the most challenging film of his career hits the cinemas, Kevin Bacon lets off steam to Xan Brooks in The Guardian.

German actress Franka Potente, Chinese actress Bai Ling and French fashion designer Nino Cerruti will be among those choosing the winner of the Golden Bear top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival next month. A.P. reports.

When Ellen Perry began making her documentary "The Fall of Fujimori," she said, she never thought her tale of a government wielding sweeping police powers in the name of democracy would become a story with eerie parallels to the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Bob Tourtellotte takes a look at the film, which is screening at Sundance.

A series of gritty war movies out of the Middle East, including the first feature films from Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, will be screened at a major film festival that opened Wednesday in the Netherlands. The 34th International Rotterdam Film Festival, one of the largest in the world for documentaries and independent film, runs through Feb. 5 with 800 movies in 17 categories, A.P. reports A.P.

Poised to leave the studio they founded, brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein bathed in the Oscar spotlight again on Tuesday as Miramax drew some of the year's most coveted Academy Award nominations, Bob Tourtellotte reports in Reuters.

Multiple Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman lamented the state of modern filmmaking, using a promotional session for his latest feature to pan a money-hungry marketing-focused industry. Agence France Presse reports.

Only an hour after Oscar nominations were handed out Tuesday, the frenzied three-week campaign to capture Academy Award votes was well under way, with movie publicists scrambling to book prime slots to screen their films. Beth Harris reports for A.P.

A year ago, two very different oddball movies, "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Super Size Me" - one a teenage comedy, the other a fast-food documentary - ended up having some important things in common.

Both were made for little money (much less than half a million dollars), both were sold at the Sundance Film Festival for a lot of money, and both went on to earn the studios that bought them much, much more money at the box office - $44 million and $27 million, respectively.

The man largely responsible for their success was not a Hollywood studio executive but an aggressive New York lawyer named John Sloss, who worked as the sales agent for the virtually unknown creators of both movies, and 11 other films as well. Randy Kennedy reports for the New York Times.

The fur is still flying over Halle Berry's action flop "Catwoman." The Razzies, which mock the worst in film, gave "Catwoman" a leading seven nominations Monday, among them worst picture, worst actress for Berry and worst supporting players for Sharon Stone and Lambert Wilson. David Germain reports in the Associated Press.

British actress Antonia Bernath is making her debut in Kisna - the Warrior Poet, marking a growing trend for non-Indian stars to appear in Bollywood films. Directed by Bollywood veteran Subhash Ghai, the film is set in the British Raj and Bernath plays an army general's daughter who falls in love with a rural boy, Kisna. Suniti Singh reports for BBC.

Organisers of the third Bangkok International Film Festival have been determined to carry on with this year's event despite the ravages of the Asian tsunami disaster. Participants observed a minute's silence for victims of the tsunami
The festivities have been scaled down, red carpets have been mothballed and profits from ticket sales are being donated to the tsunami relief fund. Neil Smith reports for BBC.

"Greece's greatest living filmmaker has embarked on his most ambitious project yet. Theo Anelopoulos talks to Fiachra Gibbons in The Guardian.

Emir Kusturica, the Bosnian director who won Cannes Film Festival's prestigious top prize twice, will chair the event's jury this year. Kusturica, 50, won the Palme d'Or with 1985's "When Father Was Away on Businesss" and "Underground" in 1995, BBC reports.

Critic, screenwriter and programmer Cameron Bailey has been named International Programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival, organizers announced this week. He will focus on films from Africa, South Africa, South Asia, and independents from the U.S. and Europe. Bailey founded the festival's Planet Africa section in 1995 and selected movies for the section until 1997.

The festival also announced that the Planet Africa section of the festival will be discontinued, and films that would have screened in the sidebar will be added to lineups in other sections of the festival. Bailey reviews film for Toronto's NOW Magazine, CBC Radio One and the CTV network's "Canada AM".

In Wednesday's iW BOT chart, indieWIRE inadvertantly didn't tabulate the weekend box office numbers for Maurizio Benazzo and Nick Day's self-distributed film, "Short-Cut to Nirvana: Kumbh Mela." The film, which documents the pilgrimage by tens of millions of people every twelve years to India's holiest rivers, Ganges and Yamuna, scored the highest gross in the specialty releases during the MLK weekend. "Nirvana" grossed $12,127 on one screen, ahead of Miramax's "Les Choristes," which took in $23,239 on two screens for an $11,620 average.

"The most gratifying and rewarding thing is that audiences love it," said Benazzo and Day to iW Wednesday. "We have people cheering and applauding as the credits roll. Then, on the way out, people sign our mailing list, pick up posters and postcards and tell us they do whatever they can to help spread the word. And it is happening, because whenever we arrive in a new city, the word-of-mouth has arrived before us." The co-directors told iW they plan to roll out the film in the arthouse circuit. "We are working closely with Landmark Theatres and now have openings in all their cities across the country. Also, after a run of seven weeks at the Rafael Film Center in Marin County, art houses
everywhere are interested in booking the film. So we'll open in most major cities in the USA over the next three months while starting work on foreign
distribution."

Alison Fussell, President and CEO of IMAGE Film & Video Center, announced today the appointment of Jessica Denton as the new Festival Director of the Atlanta Film Festival, now in its 29th year. The annual summer event takes place June 10-18, 2005, in downtown Atlanta and includes over 150 independent films from around the world, plus dozens of informative panels and discussion forums led by visiting artists. Denton will also oversee monthly programming for the non-profit IMAGE - the only resource in Georgia, and one of the few in the Southeast, dedicated to the independent film community.

Former Miramax acquisitions exec Arianna Bocco will join The Gersh Agency as the head of the groups indie film unit, according to Variety. She recently spent three years at Miramax as Sr. VP of Acquisitions and six years in acquisitions at other companies.

American film director Martin Scorsese announced he will accept the honorary presidency of the Vienna Film Museum, considered one of the most important in Europe. "Its [a] remarkable collection, the creativity of its programming and its unique sense of cinema have made it a model for the rest of the world," Scorsese said in a press release. Agence France Presse reports.

A stormy love story set among Turkish immigrants in Hamburg, Fatih Akin's new movie, "Head-On," has been collecting prizes since its release last year. Yet its true importance may lie elsewhere. As the first ethnic film to be both a box-office and critical success in Germany, it signals new acceptance of multiculturalism. On screen, at least, Germans are now ready to meet immigrants they have long walked past on the street. Alan Riding reports for the New York Times (free subscription required to view).

Alejandro Amenabar's "The Sea Inside," Spain's entry for the foreign-language Academy Award, received the audience award for best narrative feature at the 16th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, which concluded Monday. Gregg Kilday writes for the Hollywood Reporter.

"Kinsey," which stars Liam Neeson as the pioneering sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, is set to close the Berlin International Film Festival (Feb. 10-20), sources said. Liza Foreman and Scott Roxborough report in the Hollywood Reporter.

G. Allen Johnson gives his take on storytelling and Hollywood while looking at "Coach Carter" in the San Francisco Chronicle.

But what Section Eight has aspired to in maverick spirit, it has so far lacked in popular appeal, and Mr. Clooney suggested that he and Mr. Soderbergh would split when their deal expired with Warner Brothers Pictures in two years. Laura M. Holson reports for the New York Times (free subscription required to view).

Paul Giamatti, star of Sideways and American Splendor, talks to John Patterson about fame, wine-tasting and how people want him to listen to their singing fish. The Guardian reports.

Lew Wasserman, the ultimate Hollywood power agent who became the tycoon behind the Music Corporation of America and Universal Studios, studiously avoided on-camera interviews and appeared not to have left any personal memoirs when he died in 2002.

But in a twist he probably would not have appreciated, Wasserman will be on the big screen at the Palm Springs International Film Festival Friday night, as the subject of a feature-length documentary, "The Last Mogul: The Life and Times of Lew Wasserman," by the Toronto filmmaker and advertising executive Barry Avrich. Ross Johnson reports for the New York Times.

Jon Fitzgerald and Mitch Levine's Festival Consulting Group has launched The Programming Bureau, a new web-based subscription service for festival planners, studios, distributors and sales agents. Subscribers can access a database listing top festival circuit titles and upcoming films. Info available includes detailed film info and contact information, as well as other materials.

A new doc about American soldiers in Iraq, "Gunner Palace," has been rated 'R' on the basis of language and distributor Palm Pictures is planning to appeal the decision, the company said today. The rating will prevent audiences under 17 from seeing the film without a parent or guardian.

“No doubt, there is strong language in the film, but taken in context of the subject, soldiers at war, the language is not gratuitous,” said Michael Tucker, co-Director of the film, in a statement. “We may not like or agree with what the soldiers say in this film. Some of us may even find their language offensive. However, their voices deserve to be heard -- without restriction -- in the country that sent them to war...To restrict access to the film via an 'R' rating is essentially censoring the experience of the American soldier. As Americans, one way we can support the troops, is by listening to what they have to say. To do this, to honor and respect their experience and sacrifice, we ask the MPAA to constructively work with us to bring the soldiers story to an audience that will include teens who are mature enough to see this film."

"Turtles Can Fly," which opened across the UK on Friday, is the first feature film to come out of Iraq since Saddam Hussein took power in 1979. Directed by Bahman Ghobadi, a Kurd born in Iran, it is set in an Iraqi refugee camp and features as its protagonists a clutch of local children, Victoria Lindrea reports for BBC.

The Miami International Film Festival (MIFF), presented by Miami Dade College (MDC), announced today it will honor prolific filmmaker, Jean Rouch, during the 22nd annual Festival to be held February 4-13, 2005. Jean Rouch: A Celebration of Life and Film includes screenings of many of Rouch’s major films along with a symposium. For information and a list of films screening in the retrospective, visit their website.

In the New York Times today, Laura Holson reports that the expected split between Disney and Harvey & Bob Weinstein could be announced soon, adding:

Disney executives and representatives of Miramax, which is owned by the Burbank-based company, are expected to discuss later this week or next which creative projects the Weinsteins, who have been in testy negotiations over their contracts, will be allowed to take with them as they exit Disney. Harvey Weinstein has asked to retain projects with filmmakers he is particularly close to, three negotiators involved in the talks said. These include an untitled film by Quentin Tarantino, who catapulted to fame with Miramax's "Pulp Fiction," and a project being adapted by Anthony Minghella, the director of "Cold Mountain," also produced by Miramax.

The San Francisco Film Society announced today that Joan
Allen will be the recipient of the Peter J. Owens Award to be presented at
the 48th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 21-May 5, 2005).
The Owens Award, named after local cultural benefactor and longtime Film
Society board member Peter J. Owens, honors an actor whose work exemplifies
brilliance, independence and integrity. The award will be presented to Allen
at Film Society Awards Night on Thursday, April 28, 2005 at the
Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco. The Film Society will be the beneficiary of the
gala black-tie fundraiser honoring Allen and the yet-to-be-announced
recipient of the Film Society Award for Lifetime Achievement in Directing.

British Columbia's billion-dollar film industry is looking to the provincial government to counter improved tax credits in Ontario and Quebec that are already luring productions eastward. Peter Kennedy reports for The Globe and Mail.

Thomson -- born in Britain and a resident of the United States for 30 years and San Francisco for more than 20 -- is among the most respected film critics and writers around. He's written more than 20 books, including the landmark Biographical Dictionary of Film, which first appeared in 1975 and is now in its fourth incarnation. G. Allen Johnson profiles the critic ahead of a series he programmed at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley for the San Franicisco Chronicle.

To question certain actors about their acting is potentially to spoil the magic that a master artist is able to conjure. And Sean Penn has no intention of revealing his bag of tricks. In his current film, "The Assassination of Richard Nixon," he plays Sam Bicke, a deluded loser who hatches a bizarre scheme to knock off the 37th president of the United States, Jamie Painter Young speaks with Sean Penn in Reuters.

In the New York Post today, the day that the film will be honored by the New York Film Critics Circle, Barbara Hoffman looks at some who are underwhelmed by "Sideways":

"Seriously overrated," "plodding" and "mundane" are just a few of the charges they've leveled against Alexander Payne's paean to middle-age friendship and pinot noir.

Granted, the naysayers are outnumbered - by 157 to 5, according to the movie-review site rottentomatoes.com.

But those hardy few who dissed "Sideways" and weren't afraid to say so are a defiant, unrepentant lot.

"It sounds cavalier, but if I'm going to be cowed, I have no business being a critic," declares Salon's Charles Taylor, whose review compared sitting through "Sideways" to "[being] trapped at dinner with a wiseass who's trying to convince you what a sensitive guy he is."

Cutbacks at postproduction facilities owned by local luminaries Francis Ford Coppola and Saul Zaentz have illuminated the struggles of the Bay Area to reassert itself as a filmmaking hub. "It's a little bit of a warning signal more than a proclamation of disaster," San Francisco director Philip Kaufman said of layoffs at the Saul Zaentz Film Center in Berkeley and the closure of Coppola's American Zoetrope in San Francisco. Carla Meyer reports for the San Francisco Chronicle.

The life of late Joy Division singer Ian Curtis is to be made into a film, it has been announced. The Manchester-based production is called Touching From A Distance, after a book by Curtis's widow Deborah which forms the basis for the film. Michael Osborn reports for BBC.

Slate.com's annual year-end Movie Club kicked off earlier this week, with critics A.O. Scott (New York Times), Charles Taylor (Salon), Armond White (the New York Press), Stephanie Zacharek (Salon), Scott Foundas (L.A. Weekly), Christopher Kelly (Fort Worth Star-Telegram), and Wesley Morris (Boston Globe) talking about film criticism, lobbing insults at each other, and even discussing the past year's films.

Armond White kicked things off with a few thoughts:

Hipster self-righteousness has become a blight on film culture. The Voice poll revealed (or constructed) a disappointing, nationwide urge among film journalists to outsmartass each other. (Yes, I write for New York Press, which some people think of as the Voice's opponent, but these thoughts are not born of competition. I'm aiming at a problem bigger than one publication or institution.) The "victory" of a cliquish, solipsistic—and drab—film like Before Sunset is indicative of a dead-end culture. Coterie thinking passing for free expression. Too many critics—and filmgoers—are now smug about movies without being curious, honest, or imaginative. That's what Before Sunset celebrates. And that's why '04, which I think was an astonishingly rich year for movies, saw so many, many unique films drop out of the marketplace (that's Cineplex to you die-hard romantics) while so many, many mendacious and unsurprising films held sway in the culture.

But later in the discussion went on the defensive:

I didn't think being invited to the join the Movie Club meant I had to subject myself to being called a "bully" and "slightly nuts" just because I try to write with force and enthusiasm. It's another example of critics who refuse to deal with an opposing thesis and resort to weak forms of dismissal. This is what's bad about movie writing that turns into a sophomoric sport.

As expected, Viacom has made it official and named former Brillstein-Grey Chairman Brad Grey the new Chairman And Chief Executive Officer Of the Paramount Motion Picture Group.

The complete press release is available below:

It's not often that French movie circles and French wine circles are buzzing about the same thing. But "Mondovino," Jonathan Nossiter's documentary about the globalization of wine, has movie critics here (in France) reaching for superlatives and some wine experts lobbing expletives, while audiences have turned the movie into a surprise hit. Kristin Hohenadel reports in the New York Times (free subscription required to view full article).

At the UK premiere of his epic film of Alexander, Oliver Stone last night blamed "raging fundamentalism in morality" for the film's US box office failure. "Sexuality is a large issue in America right now, but it isn't so much in other countries," the Oscar-winning director explained yesterday. "There's a raging fundamentalism in morality in the United States. The Guardian reports.

"Hitler's Hit Parade" is hardly a trip down memory lane. This film's juxtaposition of romantic songs and wartime brutalities can cause viewers to squirm or turn away in horror. The disturbing collage of Third Reich musicals, newsreels, home movies, cartoons and commercials, including rare segments in color, shows how the Nazis relied on escapist entertainment to promote their murderous ideology and bolster the veneer of normalcy during the nightmare of Adolf Hitler's reign. The 75-minute production, co-directed by Oliver Axer and Susanne Benze, opened Wednesday for a two-week run in New York. David Minthorn reports in the Assoicated Press.

Robert Wilonsky looks at the 2004 and indie in the SF Weekly:

Where once "independent film" meant a movie made outside the clutches of Hollywood, now it means simply a movie that resembles something done on the fringes. It's no longer a question of ownership, but of aesthetics: Is it quirky? Dark? Inscrutable? Full of famous people taking off their clothes? Made with shaky cameras and set to a minimalist score? Is it funny but not laugh-out-loud funny? Do people talk and talk but never really do anything? Yeah? Then it's indie.

Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to serve in Congress and the first woman to seek the Democratic presidential nomination, died on Saturday night at her home in Ormond Beach, Fla. She was 80. James Barron reports in the New York Times about the woman who was the subject of Sundance 2004 doc, "Chisolm '72: Unbought and Unbossed." (Free subscription required to view)

Zhang's own loyalties are difficult to surmise. On one level, he is now the official poster boy of Chinese cinema. Both Hero (his previous martial arts film) and House of Flying Daggers have been huge hits in Asia. Hero, meanwhile, has broken box-office records in the US. Zhang has travelled widely to promote the films. He has talked about them repeatedly in aesthetic and philosophical terms. The one subject he won't mention is politics, The Guardian reports.