ANDORRA

Jump Street Films will bring Peter Cameron’s acclaimed novel ANDORRA to the screen.

Company director Jamie Bialkower has optioned the film rights and will produce under the Jump Street banner as part of a recently formed partnership with Cargo Entertainment.

Production is scheduled for 2014 from an adaptation by Cameron himself. 

A psychological thriller laced with a darkly comic, surrealist edge, ANDORRA tells the story of Alexander Fox, an elegant gentleman who leaves behind his entire life in America to start anew in the lovely, tiny nation of Andorra. The city’s inhabitants seem to take an almost unsettling interest in his arrival, and he’s quickly drawn to two women – the tall, cool Australian blonde with a giant dog and the same name as her husband, and the reserved, heartbroken daughter of the town’s matriarch. But the mystery of his new home quickly deepens. A dead body turns up in the harbor and Alexander finds himself an immediate suspect. Why is the local detective so convinced of his guilt?

ANDORRA has been described as a “marvelous mood piece” by The New Yorker, and a “dark, intoxicating fable” by Newsweek. “It does everything you want fiction to do” (The Village Voice), and “exerts an almost hypnotic fascination... Redolences of Kafka and Buzzati and Nabokov” (The Washington Post).

Peter Cameron’s previous book, “The City of Your Final Destination”, was made into a film by Merchant Ivory, starring Anthony Hopkins and Laura Linney.

Cargo Entertainment partnership

Jump Street Films announces partnership with Cargo Entertainment (Sunday November 4)

Jump Street Films today announced a new partnership with Cargo Entertainment, an international production company, sales agency and packager of filmed entertainment.

The two companies will develop Australian content under a multi-purpose banner covering financing, production, local distribution and world sales, offering a unique service for highly qualified producers and filmmakers in the marketplace.

Via an exclusive multi-year output deal, Jump Street will handle the Australian distribution of Cargo’s international slate, launching with “The Angriest Man In Brooklyn”. The comedy starring Robin Williams, Mila Kunis, James Earl Jones, Melissa Leo and Peter Dinklage, from director Phil Alden Robinson (“Field Of Dreams”) and writer Daniel Taplitz (“Red Dog”), is now in post-production.

Andy Garcia’s highly anticipated “Hemingway and Fuentes” will start production in early 2013. Garcia will star opposite Anthony Hopkins as Ernest Hemingway and Annette Bening as Mary Welsh Hemingway, in a story about the inspiration for “The Old Man and the Sea” which has been co-written by Hemingway’s niece, Hilary.

Other forthcoming highlights include the Stephen King adaptation “Cell” starring John Cusack; Tony Kaye’s sexual thriller “Attachment” starring Sharon Stone; and “Zipper”, from producer Darren Aronofsky, starring Patrick Wilson, Ben Kingsley, Christina Hendricks and Billy Bob Thornton.

Founded in 2011 by Marina Grasic, Jan Korbelin and Mark Lindsay, Cargo is based in New York and Los Angeles and is an affiliate of the multi-platform production studio Curious Pictures. The combined experience of the partners numbers over 60 years, across such companies as Miramax and Sidney Kimmel Entertainment. Grasic and Korbelin were Executive Producers on the Academy Award® winning film, “Crash”.

Cargo’s head of Acquisitions and Co-Productions, Krysanne Katsoolis, will oversee the Australian venture with Jump Street director Jamie Bialkower. The two companies will leverage their pre-existing relationships and newly established strategic alliances with lending institutions, financiers and production companies to develop highly sought-after projects, ensuring transparency and consistency from inception to delivery.  

Michael Bodey, The Australian on SWERVE

CRAIG Lahiff had a solid historical drama to his name and some crackling new genre scripts. But at a time when Australian filmmakers were being told to concentrate on cheaper genre pictures, the director of Black and White faced rejection with his three genre projects.
"It was hard to do genre films and get the support here, particularly for thrillers and film noir," he says. "I developed about three of them at around the same time but nobody (wanted them). Funding bodies or distributors said the Americans can do this better, so don't bother."

Lahiff laughs. Americans can also do "art films" better than most nations, so he couldn't quite see the logic of that argument.

Nor did he appreciate questions on casting. Again, the market and funding bodies look at the cast and invariably say if you don't have Hugh Jackman or someone similar headlining your Australian film, it can't compete against American films.

Yet Lahiff managed to attract two Australians now better known in the US than their homeland to star in Swerve. Jason Clarke has starred in US television series Brotherhood and The Chicago Code and worked with Michael Mann on Public Enemies, Baz Luhrmann on the coming The Great Gatsby and now Kathryn Bigelow on her coming Navy SEALs drama.

And David Lyons, a former National Institute of Dramatic Art graduate and lead of the US series The Cape, returned home to play the good Samaritan thrown into a potboiler plot of cash, drugs and sex.

"Jason said he's been sent a lot of scripts from Australia but this is the only one he wanted to do," Lahiff says. "He's certainly on the rise over there and doing really well and David Lyons gets work over there too but they're not considered stars like Hugh and Russell (Crowe)."

So, too, with their co-star Emma Booth. "Everyone wanted to be in it because it's such a great little script," she says. "I haven't read many Australian scripts actually like this. That's what draws me to anything, something I haven't done before."

With Swerve, Lahiff has manufactured a taut, pulpy thriller that serves as a fine showcase for a surprisingly long list of well-known Australian actors, including Booth, Travis McMahon, Vince Colosimo, Roy Billing and Chris Haywood -- and for Lahiff's own talents.

Indeed, some actors, most particularly Billing and Haywood, appear only in minor roles. They had worked together before and wanted to work together again.

"They just said yes and didn't worry about the money," Lahiff says, chuckling. "Their agents were horrified.

"It's fun working with people on your film you know and who are really good actors. And it helps to use some of the actors you've used before so you don't have to reinvent the wheel."

A measure of the film's worth is that it has already secured distribution in the key markets of the US and Britain. The film's Australian qualities are an asset within genre filmmaking.

Lahiff says genre films are not owned by any particular country so they can have the benefit of looking familiar in style but foreign in outlook.

"It's sort of turned out how I wanted it," he says. "I just wanted to do something light and a lot of fun that moved quite fast and had lots of twists. I think it does that."

Booth agrees. The star of Underbelly, Cloudstreet and The Boys Are Back enjoyed being part of what she describes as "a great little cast".

"And (Lahiff) came to us; we didn't audition," she says. "That was a huge compliment for us so you've always got to take notice when someone has you in mind for a character. That's always a drawing card.

"I think a lot of the budget went into paying the cast because he knew what he wanted and didn't compromise on that," she adds.

Booth plays Jina, who, while driving in the outback (the stunningly photographed Flinders Ranges), avoids a head-on collision with another driver who careens off the road.

Lyons's Colin stops to help her before finding a suitcase full of cash in the ruins of the car. Colin hands in the cash to policeman Frank (Clarke), Jina's husband, unwittingly setting in train a raft of increasingly blood-curdling and consequential events marrying small-town politics with big-city drug dealing.

Booth's Jina is typical of Lahiff's smartly written characters. In less assured hands, she would be little more than a strumpet or eye candy as the boys played with their guns and fast cars.

"There's actually no real sex scenes or much nudity and I love that fact because she's a very sexual character," she says. "She's a full femme fatale and they could have used that in obvious ways. I think that adds a lot of weight to the story and her character."

Booth says it was "full on" to play such a manipulative and focal character with the many twists and turns of the film noir-inspired action film. "It was the fast pace and the emotional intensity which was constantly heightened for what she was going through," she says. "I found that really challenging to constantly be in that state she was in, going to those places and staying in them all day. It was a lot more challenging than other roles I've played."

Lahiff says the pace of the film -- which reaches some kind of crescendo halfway through before bouncing on its way again -- was key to his thinking.

"I didn't want it to stop," he says. "I thought the plot and the set-up allowed you to do that and not give you a breather."

And he did so with car chases and action scenes, then came out the other end surprisingly conceding the low budget was adequate "and I don't think it should have been any bigger".

"It was hard to get everything done in a seven-week shoot but we had a very good grip and director of photography and used all local people," he says. "We tried to make it a real Australian film."

And a disciplined film. Lahiff belongs to the school of thought that says the shorter the film the better. Lahiff believed his first cut of 92 minutes could be trimmed. It was, and the result is 87 minutes.

"Unless it's an epic like Lawrence of Arabia, you don't need any longer to tell a story," he says.

"I always cite the case of the comedy, Dr Strangelove, which runs for 87 minutes. Why do you need any more?"

SWERVE in cinemas June 7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP64GgO6fMU

SWERVE will open nationally on June 7 at the following cinemas:


VICTORIA
Nova, Hoyts Chadstone, Village Jam Factory, Village Southland, Village Knox, Rosebud


NEW SOUTH WALES
Hoyts Cinema Paris, Avalon, Avoca Beach, Wagga Wagga, Tamworth, Orange


SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Marion, Mitcham, Mt Barker, Noarlunga


WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Luna Leederville

REBELLION - NOW SCREENING

REBELLION is now showing at the following cinemas:

VIC - Cinema Nova

NSW - Hoyts Cinema Paris, Avoca Beach

SA - Palace Nova Eastend

TAS - State Cinema Hobart

QLD - Blue Room Cinebar (opens Apr 19)

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/la-haine-director-decides-to-rebel/story-fn6cc2fg-1226324113219

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/radio/program/pacific-beat/controversy-over-new-caledonia-rebellion-film/893484

4 STARS “Vibrantly intelligent and entertaining” Simon Foster, SBS

“A rare piece of filmmaking, a triumph from a director who has the skill, and the will, to commit his cinema to truth telling without compromise. Absorbing and gripping. Highly recommended” Julie Rigg, ABC Radio National

4 STARS “Some of the most thrilling military sequences in recent memory. Filled to the brim with amazing characters and confident filmmaking… exciting, kinetic, tense” Lee Zachariah, THE BIG ISSUE

“History at its most fascinating” Margaret Pomeranz, AT THE MOVIES

“Gripping. Kassovitz gives an impassioned performance” David Stratton, THE AUSTRALIAN

“An immersive, educational experience” Neala Johnson, HERALD SUN

“Gripping and impassioned” Nick Dent, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

“A powerfully direct story” Paul Byrnes, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

“Superbly made in every respect. Extraordinarily effective” URBAN CINEFILE

“Gut-wrenching. Tense, visceral… impressively shot” FILMINK

REBELLION: Philippa Hawker interviews Mathieu Kassovitz for The Age

French actor and director Mathieu Kassovitz has focused his lens - and anger - on French colonialism and a crisis in New Caledonia in 1988.

MATHIEU Kassovitz intends that audiences watching his new movie, Rebellion, ''feel the heat''. He wants people to understand the background to real-life events that unfolded during a hostage crisis in the French territory of New Caledonia in 1988. He also wants the movie to be ''cinematic as well as real''.

''You have two hours to explain a situation that sprawled over 10 days and 150 years of history. You need to find ways to get the audience to understand what you're talking about,'' he said. ''To sum up all the backstory and at the time be entertaining. And not too much of a sellout, because you are talking about people being killed. These people are in the theatre, and on the set, and it's not just about making it cool.''

Kassovitz wrote, directed and starred in the movie, which has been years in the making. Rebellion leaves us in no doubt, from the opening scene, that the conclusion was bloody and brutal. It then sets out to show us how this happened, counting down events day by day. It started when pro-independence activists seized a police station; things spiralled out of control, and three gendarmes were killed. A deft flashback sequence shows this.

The activists' leader, Alphonse Dianou (Iabe Lapacas), then took 27 gendarmes hostage. An experienced negotiator from the French armed forces, Philippe Legorjus (played by Kassovitz), is sent in. But he discovers politicians back in France, in the midst of a presidential campaign, are driven by the PR imperative. They want things wrapped up quickly, by force, no matter how dangerous this might be.

It was vital, Kassovitz says, to consult widely with the local communities, for whom these events and their aftermath are still raw and contentious, ''out of respect for the people, and the story''. Many of those playing Kanak characters were close to those they portrayed, he says: one key person is played by the man's brother, another by his son.

As an actor, Kassovitz might be best known for his role in Amelie: he made his name as a writer-director with La Haine (1995), his powerful examination of racism and alienation in the Paris suburbs.

He thinks that Rebellion is his best film, and he is frustrated, he says, that it has not had the exposure he had hoped for. He took to Twitter recently to express his anger at the single nomination the film received in the Cesars, France's equivalent of the Academy Awards. It was not because he cares about awards, he says, but because he was disappointed at ''the lack of interest by the French intelligentsia for movies like this. There are not many like it. This one means something, it was a struggle.''

To Kassovitz, the story of what happened in 1988 is still unresolved. ''The problem with France is that we don't apologise - we wonder why we should. And I don't think that's right.'' In Australia, he notes, then prime minister Kevin Rudd apologised to Aboriginal people, and he thinks France should follow this example.

''Even if it wasn't you, even if it wasn't your family or your fathers, you need to apologise, so that people can carry on. That's why we made the movie,'' he said.

Rebellion opens on April 12 at selected cinemas.

SWERVE announces Australian and North American distribution

Jump Street Films will release Craig Lahiff’s SWERVE as part of its strategic positioning platform, together with the film’s distribution company Duo Art Entertainment.

A simultaneous release date with the North American opening is planned for later this year.

Moviehouse Entertainment yesterday announced at Berlin’s European Film Market that the film has sold to the Cohen Media Group for North America and High Fliers for the United Kingdom. This adds to the film’s previous sales to Italy, Germany and the Middle East, with offers currently pending for France, Benelux, Scandinavia, Latin America and China.

A sexy and explosive Australian noir, SWERVE is written and directed by Craig Lahiff (BLACK AND WHITE, HEAVEN’S BURNING). SWERVE stars Jason Clarke, Emma Booth and David Lyons – Australia’s up and coming stars on the international stage – with a great supporting cast of Vince Colosimo, Travis McMahon, Roy Billing and Chris Haywood.

The tightly paced thriller was an audience favourite at the prestigious Hamptons International Film Festival in New York State recently. It had its world premiere at last year’s Melbourne International Film Festival and will open next month’s Australian Film Festival in Sydney.