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Production: Riccardo Tozzi, Giovannella Zannoni for Cattleya Film/Alquimia Cinema/Business Affairs Production/Galfin/Mediapro.
Director: Franco Zeffirelli.
Cast: Jeremy Irons, Fanny Ardant, Joan Plowright,
Angela Molina.
Started: July 16, Paris, Spain and Romania.
Subject: The last month (July 1977) in the life of opera star Maria Callas (Ardant), most of which she spent alone in an apartment in Paris, with Irons as the theatrical agent who attempts to coax her out of retirement.
International distribution: Medusa.
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Zeffirelli: diva director.
Neill and Brown: playing Dirty.
Ricci: joins The Gathering.
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Production: Bryan Brown (New Town Films), Debbie Balderstone (Haystack Productions) for Nine Films & Television, in association with Macquarie Film Corporation and the Australian Film Finance Corporation.
Director: David Caesar.
Cast: Toni Collette, Sam Neill, Bryan Brown, John Goodman.
Started: August 6, Sydney, Australia.
Subject: It is the late sixties and Sydney is booming with an influx of American GIs on R&R from Vietnam. Things couldn’t be sweeter for both Barry Ryan (Brown), who runs most of the rackets, and his wife, Sharon (Collette). Then Chicago mob boss Tony (Goodman) gets wind of what’s going on and wants a slice of the action.
International distribution: Alliance Atlantis International.
Production: Marc Samuelson, Peter Samuelson (Samuelson Productions), Pippa Cross (Granada Film).
Director: Brian Gilbert.
Cast: Christina Ricci, Ioan Gruffudd, Stephen Dillane, Kerry Fox, Simon Russell Beale.
Started: September 3, the Isle of Man, West of England and Elstree Studios, UK.
Subject: American backpacker Cassie (Ricci) is involved in a car accident. Accepting help from the driver, she begins to hallucinate and thinks she is being pursued by terrifying strangers who may or may not be connected with a sinister mural unearthed in a 1st-century church near Glastonbury.
International distribution: Capitol Films.
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AND FINALLY...
… HERE'S A HEART-warming tale which proves that even established film-makers can be at the mercy of events. This Is Not a Love Song is a new British thriller, directed by Bille Eltringham and written by Simon Beaufoy, who scripted The Full Monty.
Beaufoy is a recognisable enough name that he is currently being used to sell a brand of laptop computers on British television, and the new film is about the accidental shooting of a farmer’s daughter and the cross-country vigilante manhunt which ensues. It is a 100%-digital production and was originally supposed to be shot in Cumbria this summer.
But the part of Cumbria selected was one of the hot-spots of the recent British outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, and the location turned out to be right in the middle of the no-go area. A new location was swiftly found near Settle. But, before shooting could begin, this also became a foot-and-mouth-infected area. Finally, Scottish Screen, the promotional organisation set up some four years ago to promote film-making north of the border, stepped in and found a location near Aberfoyle in the Scottish lowlands.
For a variety of reasons, this left the production very little time to complete, and the film was shot on a punishing schedule in a mere 12 days. This Is Not a Love Song is one of the first batch of films to be made under the UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund, and is designed to promote projects using new technology. But even the technology proved powerless against one of the oldest scourges of British agriculture.
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