French film icon Catherine Deneuve will head the international jury that will award the coveted Golden Lion at this year's Venice Film Festival, organizers said Wednesday.
The decision was made during a board meeting of the Venice Biennale, the activities of which include the film festival.
``We are proud that a personality like Catherine Deneuve will preside over the Venice jury,'' said a joint statement by Davide Croff, president of the Venice Biennale, and festival director Marco Muller. The statement said Deneuve's charisma and knowledge of cinema would help other jurors work with serenity and balance.
The lineup of movies competing for the top award, as well as those showing out of competition, is expected to be presented next month. The festival in the lagoon city runs from Aug. 30 to Sept. 9.
Italian directors have completed a 93-minute documentary they say is the first feature film to be entirely shot using a mobile phone camera.
The theme is familiar to many independent movies -- explicit chat about love and sex -- but the tool used to shoot Italian feature-length documentary is new.
Called New Love Meetings, it was filmed in a MPEG4 format with a Nokia N90 -- a regular, higher-end cell phone on sale around the globe, documentary co-director Marcello Mencarini said.
The technique underscores what has become a fixture in today's globalized world: The use of amateur video and cell phone cameras to immortalize moments in people's lives. Also, when news breaks, early footage is often shot with a cell phone, and, in the case of major events, authorities and news outlets have been known to call on amateurs to come forward with video.
``With the widespread availability of cell phones equipped with cameras, anybody could do this,'' Mencarini said in a telephone interview from Milan. ``If you want to say something nowadays, thanks to the new media, you can.''
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told British film producer John Daly on Sunday that his government is willing to help with a movie about the 2002 coup that briefly removed him from power.
``We are willing to cooperate with John Daly and his team to make this movie,'' said Chavez, speaking with Daly during his weekly television and radio program Hello President.
Chavez said he and Daly had discussed the idea for a film about the short-lived military rebellion during an encounter several months ago in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas.
Daly praised Chavez while criticizing Washington's alleged involvement in the 2002 coup.
``Venezuelans are very lucky to have a great man like you as their president,'' he said.
``Thank you very much, John, and we are very lucky to have you here,'' responded Chavez, speaking in English with the help of a translator.
The leftist Chavez was unseated by dissident military officers for two days in April 2002 and was restored to power amid massive street protests. He has accused the US government of directing the coup, seizing on US documents indicating that the CIA knew officers had been plotting against him.
US officials have denied involvement.
Egyptian authorities will confiscate copies of the best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code and ban the film based on the book from showing in Egypt, the culture minister told parliament on Tuesday.
To applause from members of parliament, minister Farouk Hosni said: "We ban any book that insults any religion ... We will confiscate this book."
Parliament was debating the book and film at the request of several Coptic Christian members who demanded a ban.
Georgette Sobhi, a Coptic member, held up a copy of the book and the Arabic translation and said it contained material which was seriously offensive.
"It's based on Zionist myths, and it contains insults towards Christ, and it insults the Christian religion and Islam," she said.
A central part of the fictional plot is that Christ married Mary Magdalene and that their descendants are alive today.
India's largest film festival kicked off Wednesday in Dubai, as a number of Bollywood stars descended on this booming Gulf city state where Indians make up the largest ethnic community.
The International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) chose Dubai as the venue for its
seventh annual Weekend and Awards, which has become India's equivalent of the Oscars.
Indian superstar Amitabh Bachchan, who is also IIFA's "brand ambassador," launched this year's event at a press conference, flanked by representatives of Dubai government-backed organisations co-hosting IIFA's extravaganza.
"Our cinema requires to be seen by more people," said Bachchan, commending IIFA's work to promote Bollywood globally, a move which initially "people in the West were cynical about."
Bachchan also heaped praise on the host city, calling Dubai a "unique miracle," referring to the dramatic pace of development in this flourishing desert emirate.
"Today, it's not just another city. It is a meeting point for the cultures of the West and of the East," he said.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist