After 51 years in the entertainment industry and 32 years at Columbia Pictures Gary Martin is retiring from his joint role as president production administration Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group and president Sony Pictures Studios Operations.
Southern Theatres has selected Cinedigm Enterprise to centrally manage the operation of its movie theatre locations in Alabama Florida Georgia Kentucky Louisiana Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina and Texas. “Upgrading our theatres to state-of-the-art digital cinemas continued Southern’s tradition of delivering our customers the best movie-going experience possible ” said Ronald Krueger II COO of Southern Theatres.
LipSync will provide equity investment and post-production services for Desert Dance which is being produced by Crossday Productions. Desert Dancer tells the inspirational true story of Iranian dancer Afshin Ghaffarian who risked his life for his dream to become a dancer despite a nationwide dancing ban. The film stars Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) and Reece Ritchie (Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time). LipSync previously worked with producer Pippa Cross on Knife Edge.
Almost a year after Cinedigm Entertainment Group and distributor New Video jointly acquired the North American distribution rights to director Kirby Dick’s powerful The Invisible War the movie will be front and center as a finalist for Best Feature Length Documentary when the 2013 Academy Award winners are named. Focusing on the emotional stories of rape victims the film is a moving indictment of the systemic cover-up of military sex crimes chronicling the women’s struggles to rebuild their lives and fight for justice.
National CineMedia has renewed its affiliate agreements with Georgia Theatre Company and Goodrich Quality Theaters. Under the terms of these exclusive long-term renewals a combined 61 movie theaters with 587 screens and approximately 16.1 million annual attendees will continue to be a part of the NCM Cinema Network and present NCM’s FirstLook pre-feature program as well as NCM Fathom Events.
Dcinex Belgium has entered into an agreement with Thomas Rüttgers to acquire the 26 percent stake he owns in dcinex Austria. As a result of this agreement dcinex will own 77 percent of dcinex Austria the mother company of its exhibitor services operations in South Eastern Europe (Belarus Croatia Italy Hungary Romania and Russia). In parallel to this transaction Rüttgers owner and managing director of ECCO will leave all his management duties within dcinex including his South Eastern Europe coordination role.
Panasonic has released the AG-AF100A large imager HD cinema camcorder offering improvements and cost-efficiencies over its predecessor the company’s AG-AF100. Foremost the AF100A features 10-bit (enhanced 8 bit) 4:2:2 quality output for better gradation of tonal areas when recording onto external devices such as a P2 HD recorder. The HD-SDI signal also carries a sync signal for the Rec Start/Stop with the AF100A trigger.
Maine-based shipwreck recovery company Sub Sea Research has announced their latest venture a documentary series entitled The Port Nicholson Experience. The Port Nicholson a wreck off the coast of Massachusetts that is said to be carrying around $3 billion in platinum and gold is Sub Sea Research's current target. The series will focus on the crew's journey as they work to recover the cargo. The company plans to show this documentary in installments on their satellite site Shiprex.net.
Norway's Oscar entry Kon-Tiki will open the 36th edition of the Göteborg International Film Festival. Kon-Tiki was made by the directors behind the previous film success Max Manus and is Norway's biggest and most expensive film production to date. For the first time the festival's opening film will be screened at several theaters simultaneously. Both the directors and actors will be visiting the festival.
The Department of Moving Picture Technologies of Fraunhofer IIS has announced that Soho Digital Cinema to simplify distribution workflow and ensure adherence to screening rights. The integration of the easyDCP KDM Generator in SDC’s MEL a web application for KDM management and distribution enables SDC customers to create their own KDMs through the SDC website. DCPs and KDMs play an integral role in the digital cinema distribution workflow.
