The IFI is hosting a special screening on June 16 of a new Chinese film, Jin tian de yu zen me yang? (How Is Your Fish Today?), which was directed by Xiaolu Guo, who co-wrote the script with Hui Rao. The film is a blend of documentary and fiction in which both Guo and Rao appear as themselves.
Guo will be present during the screening and will introduce her film beforehand.
The French television writer Frédéric Krivine is coming to Dublin at the invitation of the Guild. The creator and writer of many of the 125 episodes of PJ, France's police procedural television show, Krivine also created and wrote the tense television thriller Nom de code: DP.
He is the creator, main writer, and executive producer of a new 66 x one hour series, which will be collectively written in a European take on the American writers' room system. Since June last year he's been the co-president of L'Union-Guilde des Scénaristes.
The meeting will be on 20th June at 8.00pm – venue to be announced - and will be open to Guild members only.
Full information about the Darklight Festival (21-24 June) has been released. The three days will be crammed with forums, workshops, a YouTube video lounge, screenings, and masterclasses featuring film/television industry professionals and experts. It costs €50 to attend all the events, and a mere €20 for the unwaged/students.
The twelve short films nominated for the 2007 Diversions Short Film Award have been announced. They are competing for a €5,000 cash prize that comes with €5,000 worth of time at the Filmbase production facilities.
Each short will be screened in Temple Bar's Meeting House Square, and will precede the Jameson Movies on the Square feature presentation every week from Saturday June 9th until Saturday August 25th.
Back Stage reports that American television networks are going to try a number of innovations to stop their audiences from fast-forwarding through the commercials on the shows they've recorded with a DVR. It coincides with a week in which the Nielsen Media Research started to offer ratings for commercial breaks as well as television shows.
One of the ideas gaining popularity is "content wraps", used by the CW network. In one example a hair care company abandoned a typical advertisement to present beauty tips and interviews with the network's stars, which used the company's products. Another idea is to intersperse competition clues during commercial breaks, or to embed advertisements on a show's web site. Product placement will probably become ubiquitous in the future.
"We all need to become more creative in how we incorporate sponsors into a program," said Ed Swindler, executive vice president for NBC Universal ad sales. "No one on the creative side or the business side wants to make commercials intrusive, but we do need to commercialize efficiently so viewers can afford to get free television."
An estimated 17 percent of American homes now have digital video recorders. Nielsen estimates that in prime-time, nearly half of 18-to-49-year-old viewers with DVRs are watching recorded programs instead of live ones. Of these, six in 10 skip through the ads.
RTÉ has announced the winners of the 2007 PJ O'Connor Radio Drama Awards.
First prize and €3,000 goes to Ciarán Gray from North Strand in Dublin for his radio play 'In the Real World'. Second prize and €2,000 was won by Kevin Gildea from Dún Laoghaire for 'Story'. Third prize and €1,000 was awarded to Garrett Keogh from Gorey, Co Wexford for 'Nancy'.
All the plays will be professionally produced and broadcast later this year on RTÉ Radio 1.
The BBC has a strong tradition of broadcasting radio plays. Yesterday's play, which you can access via the website, was Keep Your Pantheon, the premier of David Mamet's new comedy of ancient Roman manners. In the 46-minute play an impoverished actor-manager and his troupe struggle to survive.
The BBC reports that a new Dutch reality TV show is causing an uproar in its home country.
Called The Big Donor Show, it features a terminally-ill woman who selects one of three patients to receive her kidneys when she dies.
The programme, from Big Brother creators Endemol, is due to be screened on Friday night.
The 37-year-old donor, identified only as Lisa, will make her choice based on the contestants' history, profile and conversation with their family and friends.
Viewers will also be able to send in their advice by text message during the 80-minute show.
The Guardian reports on tirade about the state of programming for children on television from critically-acclaimed writer Philip Pullman. Pullman is the author of many children's books, including the Dark Materials trilogy, which are being filmed.
Pullman castigated broadcasters for sacrificing high-quality programmes in favour of those that yield more marketing opportunities. 'Children are regarded by broadcasters as a marketing opportunity at best, a dangerous and feral threat at worst, and an expensive nuisance otherwise,' Pullman said. 'This social poison goes much deeper than broadcasting, of course, but it's particularly visible there. ...
Pullman went on to say that fiction loses its value unless it 'tackles the great moral dilemmas of our time'. 'Fantasy, and fiction in general, is failing to do what it might be doing,' he said. 'It has unlimited potential to explore all sorts of metaphysical and moral questions, but it is not doing that.
'You can't leave morality out unless your work is so stupid and trivial and so worthless that nobody would want to read it anyway.
RTÉ reports that Garage, directed by Lenny Abrahamson and written by Mark O'Halloran, has won the CICAE Art and Essai Cinema Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
CICAE is the International Confederation of Art House Cinemas and the jury is made up of representatives of its members.
Commenting on 'Garage's win, director Lenny Abrahamson said: "I am totally delighted with this award coming after such a fantastic reception for the film at Cannes. It's the best possible launch for its journey around the world."Mark O'Halloran is a member of the Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild, and the Guild offers him its heartfelt congratulations.
It's a tough job pitching for work as a television screenwriter in L.A., and last week writer David McMillan decided to try a new approach. According to the L.A. Times McMillan created a video pitch and placed it on YouTube. He sent the link to 100 industry contacts he'd amassed during his career in L.A., and although he hasn't landed a job yet, he's garnered positive feedback and an article about his ploy in the newspaper.
"I love the bold move," said Carol Barbee, executive producer of "Jericho" and the former show runner of "Judging Amy" who assigned McMillan his first script. "I think any way you can get people's attention -- as long as you come off as competent and professional -- can't hurt."
"When assembling a TV staff, you're also assembling a group of personalities to share a writers room," David Rambo, a writer-producer for "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," said via e-mail. "The video conveys a personality, and that may help David in his job search."
Landing a job isn't easy. This year alone, said Glenn Geller, senior vice president of current programming at CBS Paramount, his studio expects to hire a mere seven writers out of the hundreds who apply for its 21 shows.
The Stage notes that at a London gala in memory of the late Sheridan Morley--actor, author and critic--the inauguration of the Sheridan Morley Prize for the Best Theatre Biography was announced.
During his long career, Morley wrote more than 30 books, including major biographies of Noel Coward, John Gielgud, his father Robert Morley, and his grandmother Gladys Cooper. To celebrate the art of theatrical biography and to continue his legacy in the forefront of this field of literary endeavour, The Sheridan Morley Prize will be awarded annually for the best biography of a theatrical subject written in English, during the previous year. The prize will be administered by Morley's publisher, Oberon Books.
Information about this year's Documenting the Arts funding has been released. The fund aims to support 5/6 projects, up to a maximum of €80,000 each. The deadline for applications is Friday, July 6.
RTÉ reports that Irish screenwriter Derek Landy (Dead Bodies, Boy Eats Girl) will adapt his children's book, Skulduggery Pleasant, for the big screen after Warner Bros Pictures won a bidding war for the cinema rights. The deal includes rights to all the books in the proposed nine-book series, and is rumoured to be worth over $1m.
ElectricNews.net reports that RTÉ will now offer entertainment and lifestyle content for Three's mobile TV service, building on the news and sports clips they've been offering for the past two years.
The partnership will see RTÉ shows such as 'The Late Late Show', 'Off the Rails' 'Tubridy Tonight' and 'Show Me The Money' being made available to both pre-pay and bill-paying Three customers at a rate of EUR0.50 for a period of 24 hours.
"We see your mobile as being your personal TV -- no sharing the remote, so you can watch what you want, when you want, where you want, up and down the country," said Three's head of entertainment David Riley. He added that RTÉ was the first of many mobile TV channels set to be launched by the network in the coming weeks.
The level of public interest in mobile TV services remains to be seen. A consumer mobility survey conducted by Canalys earlier this month revealed that nearly half of European consumers had no interest in mobile TV services, with a much greater proportion of those surveyed said they would like to have access to a GPS service through the mobile.
According to Guardian yesterday at the Cannes Film Festival director Martin Scorsese officially announced the World Cinema Foundation.
The concept grew from his work with the non-profit group, The Film Foundation in America, which he established in 1990 with Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford and Steven Spielberg. The organisation advocates and supports the preservation of America's cinematic heritage. To date the foundation has saved over 450 films that faced an imminent risk of being lost, and yet it's estimated that 90% of American silent films have vanished, and perhaps as much as 50% of the films made before 1950.
For the World Cinema Foundation Scorsese is backed by an advisory board of directors that include Mexico's Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth) and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel), China's Wong Kar-wai (In the Mood For Love) and Britain's Stephen Frears (The Queen).
"Things have changed, but it's almost impossible to catch up,"' Scorsese said. "So we thought over the past years it would be a wonderful thing to pull together the influence of directors around the world to work in their countries, to work on raising financing."
Scorsese said filmmakers have a "tenacity and obsession" for saving their favourite movies. The goal is to get restored pictures from around the world more exposure, whether on DVD, in cinemas or on the Internet.
"Preserving films is preserving cultural identity," said Brazil's Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries'), a board member. "We're talking here about preserving diversity and plurality, and the possibility to know each other better."
The Big Village Theatre Co. is running a playwriting competition, in which the winning scripts will be performed in a three/four night run at a theatrical venue in Edinburgh in November 2007.
Plays much be one-act (40-60 minutes), and feature between four to eight actors of any gender balance. All entries must be accompanied by a cheque for £5, and the closing date for receipt of applications is the 31st May.
The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) has announced details of the fourth round of Sound & Vision, the Broadcasting Funding Scheme, for television.
The previous three rounds of Sound & Vision have allocated a cumulative total of €29.1m for television since the scheme's inception. Through this funding, 120 new television programmes in a variety of genres have received support.Application forms can be downloaded from the site, and the deadline for entries is June 27.
The Stage reports that ITV plans to commission new drama and comedy especially for its revamped broadband website.
Tanya Lidstone, responsible for all new commissions on the site, said the broadcaster was looking to develop original formats in several genres and was already talking to ITV Productions about an idea for a new comedy-based series.
She said the series could take the form of a talent search show aimed at finding new comedians, but said discussions were at an "early stage".
This week, the broadcaster launched its first made-for-broadband commission with real life soap opera Web Lives.
Made by Films of Record, Lidstone said this would pave the way for other commissions and added: "We are trying to break the mould and I have a budget specifically for commissioning broadband programmes. I can definitely see a drama series working online and I am very keen to do one.
"We will definitely be looking to do a comedy series too and I am hoping more pitches from production companies will come in that are like that."
The Warehouse Theatre Company in Croydon is running an International Playwriting Festival from November 24 and 25 2007, and as part of the event it will showcase selected plays from the writing competition it is running.
Entries must be unproduced full-length plays that have a running time between 90 - 120 minutes. The Warehouse Theatre Company reserves the right to buy the exclusive option to produce any play entered subject to contract.
More details, and an entry from, are available from the web site. The deadline for applications is June 30.
According to The Galway Advertiser Galway will get a new arthouse cinema, called the Galway Picture Palace, within two years.
At last week's city council meeting a group called Solas, which represents the Galway Film Society, the Galway Film Fleadh, the Galway Film Centre, and the Galway Arts Centre, made a presentation regarding the project.
The group called for a four storey arthouse cinema to be built on Lower Merchants Road in Galway. The ground floor will have a box office, café, book shop, DVD store, and garden area. The first floor will have a 160 seat cinema and the second floor will have a 90 seat cinema. The top floor will have a bar/ restaurant with a 'terrace effect'.
The Galway City Council will buy the proposed site for the cinema for €1.8 million. A loan will be taken to pay for this and it will be repaid over five years from development contributions. The council will give the cinema to Solas on a long lease for a nominal fee. The cinema should be open to the public with the next year/two years.
The Paines Plough touring theatre company is once again offering its Future Perfect writing mentorship.
Now entering its third year, Future Perfect is a year long attachment that aims to create a space for writers to explore their individual voices through practical writing projects.To apply send two unbound copies of a play, along with CV and covering letter, to arrive at the Paines Plough office by Monday, 11th June.
We are looking for six writers between the ages of 18 and 30 to become Future Perfect 2008.
Filmbase reports that a one-day conference, Media Moves, will take place in the Menlo Park Hotel, Galway on Friday 8th of June 2007.
The conference will examine how the media covers stories, and in particular how it frames issues that are outside of the mainstream. There will be presentations in topics such as "Race and Gender Imagery", "Representation of Youth", and "Portrayal of Travellers", along with three workshops on media skills.
The cost: waged €50, unwaged €20.
Michael Gubbins writes for ScreenDaily.com about the invisible role of the screenwriter in the filmmaking industry, and the aspirations of the recent European Screenwriters Manifesto.
The stumbling block, or the great opportunity, is money, suggests UK writer William Nicholson, a writer on the Oscar-winning Gladiator. The status of the writer owes much to their position as a salaried employee of a film's producer, who is normally the person taking the financial risk.
"As long as we continue to be in that relationship to the project it will be hard to demand control over our work or even respect.
"The way forward if you really do want power is to function as a writer-director or even more as a writer-producer. If you want the power, you must be willing to shoulder the risk. If you don't want rewrites, be the boss," he says.
The Guild has added a a new Calendar of Film and Theatre Events in Ireland to its web site - a smaller version of the calendar is also visible on this blog: at the bottom of the sidebar on the right.
Those of you who possess a Google email account have the added bonus of being able to subcribe to this calendar so it will appear in the calendar section of your email account.
