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Subscribe to the RSS feedThe CO(te)LETTE film on US fest tour
Following successful appearances at European festivals such as the Ghent International Film Festival and the Cinedans Moving Media Festival in The Netherlands, Mike Figgis’ 2010 interpretation of the CO(te)LETTE dance production is now due to appear at a number of US festivals later this year.
The film, a cinematographic capture of choreography devised by Ann Van Den Broeck, has its first screening on Saturday 17 March at the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, followed by an outing at the 36th Atlanta Film Festival (23 March-1 April). The film has received wide acclaim, convincing audiences and critics alike of its aesthetic qualities: ‘a very beautiful, powerful, sensual and original piece’, says one Canadian reviewer, ‘a piece that leaves you with images and sounds that reverberate long after the performance’.
Five Flemish talents to Berlin
Jonas Baeckeland, Peter Connely, Kevin Meul, Sieber Marly and Olivier Van Den Broeck have been invited to the tenth edition of the Berlinale Talent Campus (11-16 February). Each of the five participants is a rising talent in their field.
Peter Connely attended Berlin last year with his Berlinale Shorts entry Back by Six, which was selected for the Berlinale Shorts Competition. Other directors invited are Jonas Baeckeland (Blauwhuys, Twelve Going on to Sixty) and Kevin Meul, who recently grabbed the Meeting Point Award for Best Short Film at the Valladolid International Film Festival with The Extraordinary Life of Rocky.
Flemish producer joins Rotterdam Lab
Flemish producer Jules Debrock will be joining 77 young film producers for the 12th edition of Rotterdam Lab, a CineMart event for emerging producers. The event takes place during the International Film Festival Rotterdam from 28 January till 1 February.
Jules Debrock’s production company Pain Perdu proved their talent with their work on Moon Blaisse’s graduation film Sometime Later which won at Geneva’s Cinéma Tous Ecrans Festival last year. The film also earned the director a VAF Wildcard, an award aimed at giving recently graduated filmmaking talent a chance to embark on a first professional project.
VAF to support 16 new Lab projects
A total of 16 Lab projects received funding from the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) this autumn. The list includes a new short by Award-winning director and video artist Nicolas Provost as well as projects by Sarah Vanagt, Manon de Boer and Alexis Destoop.
Of the 10 Lab projects that were confirmed production support, one of the titles that stands out is Nicolas Provost’s new project Tokyo Film. The filmmaker recently presented his feature debut The Invader and meanwhile continues to produce visually stunning short work. The list continues with other talented artists like Sarah Vanagt (The Corridor), Manon de Boer (Think about Wood, Think about Metal) and Laurent Van Lancker (Disorient) who are working on The Wave, Where's the Voice? Three Approximations and Diwans respectively.
Screener.be VOD platform kicks off
Flanders Image has launched a new promotional VOD platform: screener.be. The launch coincides with the start of IDFA, the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam. Most of the record number of Flemish docs that are selected for this year’s festival are also available on the brand new VOD platform.
Screener.be allows professional users who are interested in acquiring for distribution or selecting material for festivals to screen audiovisual creations made in Flanders and Brussels, Belgium. In addition to documentaries, it also contains animation, fiction and experimental Filmlab fare in different lengths. The screener.be promotional platform enables users to watch films at their own convenience, when they want and how they want. All works can be streamed in high quality once users are logged in.
Tale of Tales release Graveyard on Android
Ghent-based indie game development studio Tale of Tales have ported the mobile version of The Graveyard to the Android platform. Both a free trial version and a $1.99 full version, in which the protagonist can die, are now available from the Android Market. In The Graveyard you play an old woman who visits a cemetery, walks around, sits on a bench to listen to a song and eventually again leaves. 
The original PC and Mac version of The Graveyard was created during the production of Tale of Tales' most well known title The Path, in part to test how the audience would respond to the radical design choices the team were making. "The Graveyardis probably the purest expression of our design philosophy to date," directors Michael Samyn and Auriea Harvey explain.
Docs & Lab from Flanders in Kassel
Sarah Vanagt’s The Corridor, Bram Van Paesschen’s Empire of Dust and Tim De Keersmaecker’s Aperture were recently selected for the Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival (8-13 Nov). All three films are travelling the festival circuit extensively and again testify to the vibrancy of documentaries and video art from Flanders.
Bram Van Paesschen’s Empire of Dust kicked of its festival tour with selections at DOK Leipzig and Kassel but more recently the film was also confirmed for IDFA’s Panorama section. Empire of Dust is produced by Bart Van Langendonck for Savage Film (Bullhead, The Co(te)lette Film). In the documentary wo men representing two different cultures clash in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The result is an endless, harsh but absurdly funny rollercoaster of misunderstandings, as Yang is introduced to the Congolese way of dealmaking.
Mike Figgis scores two birds with one stone
Over the course of just one week, Mike Figgis’s The Co(te)lette Film notched up both the Award for Best Dance Film and the Prix du Film sur l’Art at the Cyprus International Film Festival and the Iselp Art Film Festival respectively. Since making its international debut at the Ghent International Film Festival, the film has been selected for over 15 festivals and has already collected three awards.
The Co(te)lette Film is Oscar winning director Figgis's cinematographic adaptation of the award-winning dance performance by choreographer Ann Van den Broeck. Earlier this year the film also won the Best of the Festival Award at the Dance Camera West Festival in LA and screened at festivals such as Nyon (Visions du Réel), Vancouver and Buenos Aires.
Montreal discovers Flemish media art
Following on the heels of a wave of Flemish films at the Montreal World Film Festival this year, the Montreal Contemporary Art Museum presents RealTime Unreal (31 Aug - 2 Oct), an experimental media project by Flemish artists Thomas Soetens and Kora Van den Bulcke.
In 2001 Soetens and Van den Bulcke founded the international collective Workspace Unlimited. Since then the collective has come to the forefront of media art, creating some of today's most compelling virtual worlds and interactive installations. Now Montreal has invited them for a projection series on their work, titled simply Workspace Unlimited. The selected installation by Soetens and Van den Bulcke's is their new RealTime Unreal.
Originally Soetens and Van den Bulcke's RealTime Unreal was commissioned by NYC's Museum of the Moving Image. In a piece on the NY museum's opening, New York Times critic Edward Rothstein admitted 'the conception is so strong, I was immersed in it.'
Provost added to Toronto line-up
The Invader, the debut feature by creative video artist Nicolas Provost, has been confirmed for the line-up of the 36th Toronto International Film Festival (8-18 September). The film is selected for the fest's Discovery section, which puts a 'spotlight on the most exciting work from up-and-coming directors from around the world'.
In early September, The Invader is to receive its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival. Together with Provost's new short, Moving Stories, The Invader is screening in the Horizons competition.
