I stumbled across some of my old writing still online on Netribution from over two decades years ago that was so bad I wanted to cancel myself before anyone else had a chance to. I was scrolling down my old year 2001 design for old raw HTML Netribution pages untouched in 20 years, and still looking much like it did then (other than screens are much bigger so there's a lot of left/right padding)…

French-based video sharing site Dailymotion is continuing its short-run free streams of independent British films with the Online World Premiere of the new feature One Day Removals, directed by Scottish filmmaker Mark Stirton. The 88-minute film will be available online from 12pm GMT on Friday 30th January, until midnight on Monday 2nd February. {dmotion}x86rbx{/dmotion} [the ALLVide…

Part 1 - Three reasons why the Digital Economy Bill will damage British businesses Part 2 - What can be done? Five steps the UK content industries could take to offset piracy losses A few weeks ago I chatted with a single dad in his 40s, working in a brewery. He's a biker, Sun-reader and towards the right politically, hating to see his taxes used to fund free school meals or asylum seekers. Ne…

Forget Buddhism, Kabbala, and Scientology - there's only one religion that the Hollywood A-list want to be seen to be worshiping these days - Knowledgology. It began five years ago when the Reverend Doctor-Professor Solomon Profundis set up The Knowledge Hub, a spiritual retreat where burned out celebrities could recharge their batteries and at the same time broaden their religious horizons. Her…

i have spent the last 6 months trying to make a small impact on my website with my content that hopefully is something different to what is offered by the established networks (as i have no budget there will be cracks here and there in the quality) and seeing as i am not handcuffed by the censorship and regulatory boards my material can be inflammatory if need be depending on what i am thinking a…

Providing a write up for the Edinburgh Film Festival 2011, which came to a close yesterday, is not straightforward for me – Edinburgh is my adopted home of 28 years, and taking pleasure and pride in its cultural events is part of why it’s a great city to live in. But whether or not we wanted it, press coverage prior to the festival launch on 15th June was sharp, even nippy: the…

I woke this morning, at the godawful hour needed for my slow and pricey train ride to Hull , from a dream where I was a kid once more, back in my school hall at St Aidan's again. We'd just finished a double filmmaking lesson (probably inspired by watching M.Dot.Strange's awesome film skool on Ytube till the early hours) and were putting the chairs back to the sides with the teenage tedium of th…

  "Most of the independent films that we have seen or heard about suffered from one problem: finance. Some have come and gone because the young independent producers have failed, and are still failing to source the big budget required for production." Sound familiar to you? It certainly will if you are a filmmaker in Bulawayo. It looked strangely familiar when it caugh…

"The mother has challenged the Anjuna polica head on and got the backing of the Goan state minister - a remarkable achievement" BBC News informs me that the mother of Scarlett Eden Keeling   - who was horribly murdered in the neighbouring beach to here on Feb 18th - - has five children and had left her alone while she went off travelling with her boyfriend. The DailyMail.co.uk says in fact she…

If you want to meet documentary filmmakers from around the globe, Sheffield Documentary Film Festival is the place to be. The 17th year of the event kicked off on Wednesday evening with the UK premier of Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. Interviewed yesterday by the chair of the Festival, Steve Hewlett, Ms Rivers replied to the loaded question - ‘why did she make the film?’ – with the pithy, ‘because…

Following the success of Brokeback Mountain and Capote, 2006 has been called by some, the gayest year in recorded history. But one man has gone further still. Josh Tenttrow is Professor of Gender Studies at the University of San Francisco. Often called the most flamboyant academic in the US, Tenttrow has written a string of books examining gender and sexuality issues in mainstream cinema…

It should have won an Oscar for best animated short, but its use of copyrighted images prevented that (albeit printed onto paper and folded into origami shapes). When I briefly met Virgil Widrich, whose Copyshop did stretch to Oscar glory, at the Hull International Short Film Festival, he thought that Fair Use laws would be enough for this film to get a US release and Oscar nomination. But…

Submitted article from Zenia Mai Enriquez: Can you outsource video post-production work?  Can outsourcing efficiently provide the cost advantage benefit without sacrificing quality?    The outsourcing industry is booming and it is expected to grow even further in the coming years. Driven by improved yet low-cost telecommunication capacity and the upswing of technology…

Method acting is a technique used by many leading Hollywood actors. Everybody from De Niro to Hoffman uses it. One of the leading teachers of method acting working today is Arnold Bloomberg of the Bloomberg Academy of Drama in New York. Dr Andrew Cousins, went to learn more. AC: What is your fundamental approach to acting? AB: For me acting isn't just about pretending to be somebody else. It's…

Last year I built the website for a new documentary due to premiere this year about the issue of land-grabbing in Africa. I'd first been introduced to the production team at an remarkable week as part of the Swim Lab, and been struck silent as the director, Joakim Demmer, explained in plain terms how while we are sending billions in aid to countries like Ethiopia, we are also, inadvertently, he…

So I decided to give myself the Christmas break - from just after boxing day until the 9th of January when I returned to work to tryand get Netribution 2.0 up online. I ordered one of the most boring christmas presents in memory - Larry Ulman's 'PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Websites' and proceeded to teach myself some basic PHP, beynd what I'd hacked for the www.ukfilmfinance…

The opposite of Ultimate Improv's NYC Grand Central Station freeze, with a wink to T-Mobile's Liverpool Street Station antics. To promote a Flemish reality TV show.

Brilliant actor Paul Scoffield, star of A Man for All Seasons, the Crucible and Quiz Show, has also passed away.David Paul Scofield, CH, CBE (21 January 1922 – 19 March 2008) was an award-winning English actor of stage and screen. Noted for his distinctive voice and delivery, Scofield won both an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award&nbs…

Peter Finch in Network tells it how it is, remixed by videobeats/pixm.

With a new chair this year in the shape of Scotsman, Alex Graham, presiding over a delegate list now 2,500 in number and Aussie Heather Croall still proving to be an assured hand in the Director’s role, Sheffield Doc/Fest 2012 is still on a steady and upward trajectory. Funding and making docs is tough territory but in these financial anni horribili the festival itself succeeded in not only keepi…

Some very important occasions in your life only comes ones and that's all. Such happening like your wedding, high school graduation party, a trip to a far country or an abnormal happening that you happen to witness are things you will never love to forget. One important thing that is of great important to help you record such occasions is a camera. Now, with a camera in hand, the next thing that…

Muto is a rather neat stop motion graffiti in Buenos Aires and Baden, by the artists collective BluBlu. Thanks Ann, for forwarding, it seems a cross between Rinpa Eshidan and that Mark Ronson video, with a whole life of its own.

In 2006 we wrote here about this new idea of crowd-source financing to fund films, which had funded a few short films – a couple of years before IndieGoGo and Kickstarter took off. We'd followed the growth of a new website 'craze' called YouTube, that was making the industry sit up sweaty, followed their first feature filmmakers Arin and Susan and written about alternative exhibition as Secret Ci…

unicorn chaser

 Hallam Foe, Edinburgh 2000, Protagonist, Rataouille & Planet B-Boy "You know, everytime someone says they don't believe in cinema, someone, somewhere makes a sequel to a bad movie."  I'm slammed head first into multiplex A&E. Pulse falling, blood pressure dropping fast. I don't believe in anything any more. A sugar rush of Butterkist popcorn barely gets me into the trailers…