#film-distribution

#film-distribution

Considering Tarantino's penchant for championing Asian cinema and his taste for stylized hyper-violence, the pick certainly didn't come out of nowhere. But for many of those watching him chat about his favorites, the movie was as much of a myth as an actual product. Battle Royale hadn't been officially released on home video in the United States, so if you'd missed its few theatrical showings, you were left scrabbling for a bootleg version

Shortly, the Oscar fate of hundreds of feature and short documentary hopefuls will be decided during what is known as "preliminary voting" (December 8-12), when the 736 documentary branch members give each film they've seen a numbered score. This will yield the shortlist of 15, from which they will rank those films on a preferential ballot. The shortlist announcement will come on December 16. The whole Academy will vote on the final five. But only those who have seen all five can vote.

When "No Other Land" won the Oscar for best documentary this year, the victory should have ensured worldwide release. Instead, the film about the forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank failed to secure a US distributor. The filmmakers, a collective of Israeli and Palestinian activists, eventually self-released. The US screenings faced protests and political pushback, but the movie played to sold-out houses and earned more than $2 million at the box office.

It's been a while since Kodak launched a new film, and even longer since it actually distributed its own. But the company caught people by surprise yesterday when it announced two new film products - Kodacolor 100 and Kodacolor 200. Just as important, it announced that it would be distributing them itself, rather than going through Kodak Alaris, which has handled distribution since the company split following bankruptcy proceedings in 2012.

Maxime Cottray states that the US market for foreign language films is a tough environment, traditionally catering mainly to art house audiences in coastal regions.