Free Republic

On Sept. 25, 2021, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures was launched to memorize the world of film. It was a good idea. The cinematic experience is unique, and well known the world over. Where else can a diverse group of people be engaged such that they forget their differences and experience almost identical emotions simultaneously? The world of film is also where art and technology unite to deliver a unique mix of sound and image. Beyond entertainment, cinema is an important module of literature. Many films have also transcended the realms of the cinema halls to become cultural milestones...

**SNIP** Still, Ms. Noujaim and Mr. Amer have managed to keep going at a time when Hollywood has closed down film and television productions. After shuttering their 35-person office in Brooklyn, the married couple decamped to a house in the Berkshires, where they have made progress on six projects in various stages of production, including an HBO documentary series on Nxivm, a secretive self-help organization that has been depicted as a sex cult. And they’ve been working while watching over their three children, all under the age of five. “It’s a complete juggling act for everybody,” Ms. Noujaim said. For...

Filmmakers are now vowing to boycott the state of Georgia after the governor signed a controversial abortion bill earlier this week. The boycott is a big deal because, according to the state’s website, more top-grossing films are produced in Georgia than anywhere else in the world. So far, at least three major production companies have said they will no longer be filming in Georgia. One of those is Christine Vachon’s Killer Films, which produced the Oscar-nominated movie “Carol” and Oscar-winning film “Still Alice.” “Killer Films will no longer consider Georgia as a viable shooting location until this ridiculous law is...

Full title: Judicial Watch Obtains Previously Classified CIA Inspector General Report Strongly Condemning Agency Handling of Briefings and Interviews with the Entertainment Industry Report specifically criticizes CIA’s briefings ‘in which foreign nationals may have participated’ specifically criticizes CIA interface with ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ filmmakers (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has received a previously classified December 2012 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) strongly condemning the agency’s handling of “briefings, interviews, visits, and other support” given to the entertainment industry. The report specifically criticizes the CIA’s granting of “Secret level” access...

At least $335 million of the state’s controversial film tax credits have been sold off to corporations and individuals that critics say likely have nothing to do with the movie the perk was intended for, in a secondary market largely shrouded from public view, a Herald review of state records has found. --SNIP-- Established in 2006, the film tax credit is a 25 percent rebate filmmakers earn if they spent at least $50,000 in Massachusetts. But many don’t end up owing enough in state taxes, and the credits are legally transferable, meaning that filmmakers can sell them — on average...

Meet Preet Bharara, the U.S. prosecutor who last week indicted anti-Obama filmmaker Dinesh D´Souza on campaign finance charges. Mr. Bharara is the snapping jaws of Attorney General Eric H. Holder’s junkyard attack dog and the velvet fixer of President Obama’s thorniest political problems. Mr. D´Souza very well may be guilty of a few winks and nods that wound up violating limits on campaign contributions he was allowed to make to a friend running a long-shot campaign for the Senate. But it does seem rather odd to handcuff a guy and set $500,000 bail for a crime that in the past...

Nothing like a good old anti-Semitic movie to watch after a long day of fasting for Ramadan. Get some popcorn, kick your feet up, and shout ‘Allahu Ackbar’ as Jews are getting their heads chopped off. Refreshing! CBN NEWS – Film makers are promoting an anti-Semitic mini-series on the Muslim massacre of Jews as “family entertainment” for Ramadan. During Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, families and friends share an evening meal and fellowship after fasting from dawn till dusk. The 30-day holiday began Tuesday, July 9, and ends Aug. 7. This year features a mini-series entitled Khaibar, referring to a...

In a March 29, 2009 Detroit Free Press column, film industry proponent and popular author Mitch Albom said that if legislators were to put a cap on the state’s refundable, unlimited film incentives, you might as well “kill” them altogether. He said that a cap “…effectively chases films away. No successful tax-incentive state has a cap like this, because no studio wants to be the last film in, then find out the money is gone. They can't plan that way. They just won't come.” Film industry supporters insisted in numerous media outlets that mere ‘talk’ of capping the film incentives...

They risked their lives to capture on film hundreds of blinding flashes, rising fireballs and mushroom clouds. The blast from one detonation hurled a man and his camera into a ditch. When he got up, a second wave knocked him down again. Then there was radiation. While many of the scientists who made atom bombs during the cold war became famous, the men who filmed what happened when those bombs were detonated made up a secret corps. Their existence and the nature of their work has emerged from the shadows only since the federal government began a concerted effort to...

Here is a local news report out of Baltimore saying Maryland officials are considering prosecution of the young undercover filmmakers for taping the ACORN workers at the Baltimore office. They say it violates Maryland State Law to "surreptitiously" tape someone without their consent. They are comparing it to the Linda Tripp taping of conversations about Monica Lewinsky's activities with President Bill Clinton. An ACORN official also says she doubts the "authenticity of the videos," even though they took steps to fire the Workers in the video. She claims with "technology" available today, the video could have been "dubbed." You can...

A group of hard-Left filmmakers and writers from around the world have been using their celebrity to try to coerce the Toronto International Film Festival into banning Israeli films. Their petition, which is filled with misstatement of facts and rewriting of history, describes Israel as "an apartheid regime." It focuses not so much on Israel's occupation of the West Bank since 1967, but rather on Israel's very existence since 1948. It characterizes Tel Aviv, a city built by the sweat of Jews largely on barren coastal land, as illegitimate.

In the early days of women’s “liberation,” many activists saw abortion as a necessary and even desirable component of the sexual revolution of the sixties. Freed from childbearing, women could engage in numerous relationships without consequences.  However, like many of the tenets of feminism itself, such attitudes no longer prevail. In the grueling battle over abortion, there is growing public perception of antipathy to the barbarous practice. There is a certain remorse surrounding the issue that even its most ardent supporters find difficult to overcome.  Such a perception represents a psychological victory on the part of those pro-life forces whose...

THE Church is facing another onslaught from film-makers. After the furore over The Da Vinci Code, it is now contending with an allegedly blasphemous account of the life of St Teresa of Ávila. Geraldine Chaplin heads the cast of Teresa: Death and Life, a feature film about one of the great Christian figures. The writings of the saint — a mystic who said that Christ conversed with her — are revered as spiritual masterpieces four centuries after her death. But film-makers don’t do spirituality as easily as sexuality and, in exploring the saint’s sex life, they find themselves accused of...

Give me one reason why "judicial extraordinaire" Harriet Miers is qualified to sit on the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court. One.

It's time for politicians to protect the film industry and implement stiff anti-piracy laws. According to the Motion Picture Association of America, "pirates are costing the film industry billions of dollars each year." Thank you, J. Scott Davis

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski recently traveled to Hollywood to meet with studio executives and talk about ideas to increase production in Oregon. The Governor and a bipartisan group of legislators created "GREENLIGHT OREGON," a package of incentives that will help make Oregon a serious player in the competition for major film and television productions. This will create jobs in Oregon, in the United States, and generate millions of dollars for the ecconomy. I fully support this bill since it will help to keep "Hollywood" in the United States instead of major studios going outside of the country to shoot in...

Trying to fend off increasingly tough competition from other states and foreign countries, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to announce a plan soon to grant tax breaks for film companies to help them meet production expenses and stay in California. J. Scott Davis

Evan Coyne Maloney, 32, who dresses and looks like a college student, may very well be America's most promising conservative documentary filmmaker. Yet the Upper East Side resident hasn't completed a single film.The hype unaccompanied by output says a lot about the room for growth in the conservative documentary community. But a number of those on the right expect Mr. Maloney's unfinished debut film, "Brainwashing 101," to emerge as a breakout theatrical hit-or at least make it to theaters, a feat few films of its political ilk have managed to achieve.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. cinematographers and other film industry workers have asked the Bush administration to take action against Canadian, Australian and other government filmmaking subsidies that they say have lured away tens of thousands of jobs."We have been harmed by runaway production of films, videos and television shows that are being made in foreign countries because of ... unfair trade practices," the Film and Television Action Committee said in comments filed this week with the Commerce Department's Unfair Trade Practices Task Force.