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...popular documentaries The Aristocrats, Born into Brothels and Murderball, are struggling, while financially stronger studios - the Hollywood heavies - are scaling back. Just two years ago, each of the six major studios had at least one specialty film division that bought indie films at events like the Toronto International (TIFF) and Sundance festivals, arranged for them to be shown at movie theaters and marketed them to the public. Today only Twentieth Century Fox, Sony and Universal still have specialty divisions - Disney does, too, but in name only. Paramount closed Paramount Vantage, Time Warner shut down Warner Independent as well as Picturehouse...
While Toronto festival co-director Cameron Bailey is optimistic that by year's end money spent to acquire 2009 TIFF films will be comparable to that of prior years, others say he's dreaming. "Usually there would be one film that came close to a double-digit million-dollar sale, if not hitting that," says Ted Hope, a 20-year veteran indie-film producer whose credits include 21 Grams and The Ice Storm. "Then you would have four or five films in that $4-to-$6 million range and four to seven films in that $1-to-$3 million range...
Each year, in its City to City program, the Festival highlights a foreign cinema; and when TIFF chose Tel Aviv as the 2009 city, controversy erupted. "Tel Aviv is the military center of Israel," said Canadian author Naomi Klein, "a place from which fighter jets departed on their missions to Gaza last December-January." Soon it was mandatory for politically active stars to take sides. Sacha Baron Cohen, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Voight and Oprah Winfrey voiced their support for the program; Harry Belafonte, Julie Christie, Jane Fonda and Viggo Mortensen were all for a boycott. Politics aside (which it never...
...Earlier this week, the town decided to release 70 of the roughly 100 dolphins from the previous week's catch. But Taiji fishermen aren't the only ones bowing to international pressure. Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) chairman Tom Yoda announced on Sept. 16 that the festival will screen the film, after previously rejecting it for TIFF's official selection (the festival starts next month). Having come under fire for initially rejecting the documentary, Yoda said the reasons for rejecting or accepting films aren't generally discussed, as the festival receives more than 700 entries each year. No film festival...
...make up their own minds about the film - if The Cove is released in theaters after the festival. Whether the acclaim will be as great as it has been at other festivals remains to be seen. But for the filmmakers, a few dolphins freed and a screening at TIFF might just be reward enough...