Headlines
Subscribe to the RSS feedGary wins Urban-TV 2011 fest
Jean Baptist Dumont’s search for a con artists, Where Is Gary?, has won the Grand Prize for Best Professional Documentary at this year's 9th edition of Urban-TV 2011, the International Television Festival on Urban Life and Ecology in Madrid.
Gary is a con artist who operates in train stations all over Europe. In Brussels he scammed documentary maker Jean Baptist Dumont. As a result, Dumont started a cross-media search for this fascinating character. Producer is Peter De Maegd for Potemkino. Where Is Gary? received support from the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF).
Shooting starts on The Artists
Principal photography has begun on five-part cross-media venture The Artists, an ambitious international co-production between several northern European territories. Shooting will mainly take place in Scandinavia and Benelux. Hans Herbots directs, while production house Caviar initiated the project.
In The Artists, an international artist community in Copenhagen gets entangled in a crime investigation when one of the artists mysteriously disappears. The series will screen end of 2012 in Belgium (Canvas), The Netherlands (VARA), Sweden (SVT), Norway (NRK), Finland (YLE) and Denmark (TV3). Simultaneous with the broadcasts, audiences in all participating territories will be able to discover the characters and the story through different media.
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.
Benidorm Bastards gets Turkish version
SevenOne International has sold the production rights to Flemish TV show Benidorm Bastards (Off Their Rockers) to Turkey's Konsensus TV Productions. The winner of the Golden Rose award, Benidorm Bastards is a candid camera show that follows seven senior citizens whose mission is to roam the streets and blow the minds of as many young people as they can.
The Benidorm Bastards format was developed by production company Shelter. The Flemish version of the show first aired on commercial TV channel 2BE and VTM and was an instant success.
BAFTA nom for House of Anubis
Studio 100's English-language version of House of Anubis is nominated for this year's BAFTA British Academy Children's Awards. The awards ceremony takes place on 27 November.
House of Anubis is nominated in the Best Drama category. A co-production between Lime Pictures, Studio 100 and Nickelodeon UK, the teen series originally aired on Nickelodeon US at the beginning of this year. Both Nickelodeon UK and Australia in the meantime also started scheduling House of Anubis. Besides the original Dutch and the English-language series, there is also a German-language version calledDas Haus Anubis. Dubbed versions are shown in territories such as Sweden and Mexico.
Warner Bros to take majority stake in Blazhoffski
American media company Warner Bros is set to take a majority stake in Belgian-Dutch production company Blazhoffski. Under the new ownership, Blazhoffski will be able to rely on the support of Warner Bros to work out new formats and promote them on the international market.
Blazhoffski was founded in The Netherlands in 1996 as a independent production company, developing and producing formats for television. In 2008 Blazhoffski Belgium was launched as a sister company of the Dutch outfit. The focus of Blazhoffski Belgium is to create television formats that are both timeless and universal, with a focus on authenticity and accessibility.
Klumpies ready to conquer the world
Animated series Klumpies, a co-production between Universal Music Belgium, Flemish kiddiecaster Ketnet and Ghent-based animation studio Creative Conspiracy, is launched at this year's Mipcom (3-6 October) in Cannes.
Klumpies, which is is targeted at four- to seven-year-olds, will broadcast on Ketnet and Club RTL in the French-speaking part of Belgium. The producers recently teamed up up with BBC Worldwide for international distribution. BBC Worldwide is introducing Klumpies in Cannes to several international TV-content buyers.
Benidorm Bastards nominated for Emmys
The succesful TV show Benidorm Bastards has been nominated for this year’s Emmys in the Best Comedy category. The Emmys are the most important American TV awards.
The Benidorm Bastards format was developed by production company Shelter. The Flemish version of the show aired on commercial TV channel 2BE and VTM and was an instant success. Benidorm Bastards features a series of candid camera sketches in which senior citizens behave in a rowdy fashion.
1st-day at Mipcom
Flanders-based production outfit 1st-day is to present two refreshing animation series at this year’s Mipcom (3-6 October). Chickentown introduces zINO the rooster and his pen of absolutely lunatic chickens, while Charly Vet tells the story of a young girl who's passionate about wildlife. 1st-day can be found at the Flanders (i) booth (20.14).
'One egg a day keeps the butcher away!’ is the tagline for Chickentown (39 x 8 min), the animated series co-produced by Leuven-based 1st-day. The brand-new series already appears to be an international success; last week Canal+ Poland purchased the show, joining such broadcasters as Canal+ France, RTBF, NDR, Disney Asia and Orange Cinema. Chickentown is directed and created by Niko Meulemans.
New Flemish Primitives at brand-new Flanders (i) platform
Three independent Flemish TV production companies have come together in a joint venture that will launch their most creative formats on to the international market. It's Sue Green's job, as managing director of The New Flemish Primitives, to select and package the programmes with the greatest international appeal. Green can be contacted at the brand-new Flanders (i) [pronounced Flanders Eye] booth at Mipcom (20.14) that brings together Flanders’ most creative independent players.
At this year’s Mipcom, Green is pushing such formats and productions as the 30-minute quiz The Bounty Hunters in which two teams of two compete in an alphabet-based general knowledge game; That’s My Job, in which two kids spend a day learning the tricks of the trade in a particular job and then go head to head in a challenge to see who has best mastered the required skills; the one-minute Wesley the Gnome absurd comic shorts, that can be used in multiple platforms; Back to School, in which celebrities go back to school and are tested in the subjects they have not looked at since graduation; and the one-minute Day by Day, a light-hearted animated presentation of the most important events in history on a particular date.
