SOUTH AFRICA SIGNS FILM TREATY WITH BRAZIL AT 2014 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

     

                                

South African film to premiere at Cannes.

THE curtain raised on the 67th International Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, as thousands of filmmakers, movie-goers and journalists, together with a handful of A-list stars, head to the French Riviera.

As has become tradition for over 10 years, South Africa’s National Film and Video Foundation will host the country’s pavilion at the International Pavilion, where countries from around the world showcase their film industries.

Following last year’s co-production treaty signing with Kenya, South Africa will enter into an agreement with Brazil to help make feature film collaborations between the two easier.

Although there hasn’t been a South African film in competition as part of the official selection since 2011 — when Mads Mikkelsen screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the festival — a movie jointly made by a South African production company together with a Danish one, will have a gala screening. The Salvation, which was shot entirely near Johannesburg in 2013, will premiere on Saturday night.

The film, billed as a classic Western set in 1870s America, is directed by renowned Danish filmmaker Kristian Levring, and stars Mads Mikkelsen (The Hunt, Hannibal) in the lead role, together with Eva Green and Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the supporting cast.

Cape Town-based Spier Films worked with Danish production company Zentropa to set up this Danish-South African-UK co-production.

"We are very proud of this film and all the work and craftsmanship that was put in by South African crews," says Spier Films producer Michael Auret. "This film is a testament to the high quality work that South African crews can achieve in all departments. It was a great privilege to work on a Western which was a childhood dream of many of us and we certainly learnt a lot from Kristian Levring’s approach to making the film."

The shoot involved four months of construction and preparation followed by a two-month shoot.

Other highlights for the country’s offering over the next 10 days include the much-lauded gangster film iNumber Number, directed by Donovan Marsh. The film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last year and has been scooped up to be remade into a Hollywood movie with an American cast, and the documentary Nelson Mandela: The Myth and Me.

This year’s festival jury, which selects the event’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, will be helmed by New Zealand director, writer and producer Jane Campion, who won that coveted prize for The Piano.

See link.http://www.bdlive.co.za/life/entertainment/2014/05/14/south-african-film-to-premiere-at-cannes