Technology

The Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) has announce the long awaited amendments to the film and television production incentive.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards, which took place at the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Centre on 27 January, became the first red carpet event of the WGA strike-affected season.

The creative industries at the department of trade and industry (dti) has confirmed that details of the new South African Film and Television Production Rebate will be announced before the end of January 2008.

As the resumed negotiations between the striking Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the major Hollywood studios as represented under the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) continue comes the news that the WGA has signed interim agreements with Lionsgate and Marvel Entertainment.

The Los Angeles Times reports that computer giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) has signed a deal with Sony Pictures to manufacture DVDs from the studio’s library on request. HP expects to sign similar deals with other studios.

The Academy Awards for the 2007 outstanding film achievements will be presented on Sunday, February 24, 2008, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center®

The International Film Festival Rotterdam which opens 23 January, expects 2,600 film industry delegates from around the globe to attend. One of the events that runs alongside the festival is the Rotterdam Lab, the international trainee project of Rotterdam’s CineMart.

Glen Marques who has been CEO of M-Net since 2000 has been appointed CEO of the Naspers’ US-company Mediazone, a group company focussing on the development of broadband video content services internationally.

Taxi to the Dark Side, one of the films in the SA coordinated global documentary project Why Democracy?  has been nominated in the documentary feature section for the Academy Awards to be held in Los Angeles on the 24 February. SA filmmaker Don Edkins was a producer of the Why Democracy? project and also executive produced the nominated documentary. 

The mega Hollywood-style studio project, first mooted by the Western Province in 2002 with Dreamworld confirmed as the preferred bidder in February 2004, seems finally set to become a reality.