With open letters and festival speeches referencing Gaza, the Trump administration, the Ukraine war, and #MeToo in France’s film industry, an event which used to make a point of avoiding politics in favor of cinema for its own sake “appears to be storming the barricades.” - The Hollywood Reporter
That might seem like an obvious rule for voters of any award: View the works you’re judging. But when I recently spoke with several Academy members about the new condition, the lack of consensus about how to judge a movie was striking. - The Atlantic
“Organisers of the Picture from Auschwitz project said they have harnessed ‘cutting-edge 3D scanning technologies’ to build a digital model of the concentration camp … ‘down to every single brick’.” Yet to come are accurate digital replicas of the gas chambers and crematoria as well as scanning the adjacent Birkenau site. - The Guardian
Charter Communications is the country’s second-largest cable company after Comcast; Cox is also among the largest. … Charter’s footprint includes New York City and Los Angeles, while Cox is a major player in Boston, Phoenix and New Orleans.” The company will be called Cox Communications; Spectrum will be its consumer-facing brand. - The Hollywood Reporter
Efe Cakarel founded Mubi in 2007 to stream independent art films (“the auteurs’ platform”). Now it's a studio with an Oscar winner (The Substance) under its belt and four titles at Cannes this year. Cakarel wants to make Mubi into a full cinema ecosystem, with production, publishing, streaming and brick-and-mortar theaters. - Variety
“The future of our cohesive, democratic society feels for the first time in my life at risk. We have so much to be proud of in the UK: our tolerance, our innovative spirit, our creativity, our humour, our sense of fairness. But unless we act, we will drift, becoming weaker, less trusting, less competitive.” - The Guardian
The formula is particularly repetitive in cinema. As it happens, aspiring screenwriters in 21st-century Hollywood are following a rubric set out in the 4th century BCE. - Aeon
“Young actors are calling out wrongdoing on set more and more, and (director Christophe) Ruggia received a four-year prison sentence for what he did to Adèle Haenel. ... This idea of power play on film sets from actors and directors is no longer acceptable.” - BBC
The technology has given ChatGPT users control over the visual languages that artists have honed over the course of their careers, potentially devaluing those artists’ styles and destroying their ability to charge money for their work. - The Atlantic
“First it was HBO Go, then it was HBO Now, followed by HBO Max and ultimately just Max. But now, Warner Bros. Discovery is rebranding its streaming service yet again to: HBO Max (Yes, you read that right).” - TheWrap
Amid an ongoing tariff war, Trump’s proposal — which may ultimately remain an empty threat — goes beyond economic protectionism. It is cultural protectionism. It also reflects language ideologies that have long constrained the American film industry and American engagement with multilingual cinema. - The Conversation
Public radio had been explicitly understood as an empathy machine since the dawn of This American Life in 1996. If we allow synonyms for empathy, radio has been understood this way since long before that. - Current
The country’s film industry is the world’s second largest by output, but the big streaming services who had been commissioning films have cut way back or withdrawn from Nigeria altogether. So actors, directors and screenwriters have been making and posting movies on YouTube at an astounding rate. - The Guardian
CPB leaders denied that request, citing federal law that establishes the independent nonprofit outside of the control of the federal government. The request comes as the president is launching a broad assault against the country's two largest public broadcasters. - NPR
“New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has approved a state budget that increases the cap on the state’s film and TV subsidy to $800 million, nearly double the amount from 2022. The expansion creates a $100 million pool earmarked solely for independent projects.” - The Hollywood Reporter
