Peter Jackson’s World War I Documentary To Premiere At The BFI London Film Festival

It’s been announced that Peter Jackson’s World War I documentary is called They Shall Not Grow Old and will have its world premiere at the 62nd BFI London Film Festival on October 16th with a Q&A Peter Jackson hosted by Mark Kermode.

Directing his first ever documentary, Peter Jackson has also worked with the Imperial War Museum along with 14-18 NOW to include exclusive original footage which comes from the BBC’s film and audio archives. He says, “I wanted to reach through the fog of time and pull these men into the modern world, so they can regain their humanity once more – rather than be seen only as Charlie Chaplin-type figures in the vintage archive film. By using our computing power to erase the technical limitations of 100 year cinema, we can see and hear the Great War as they experienced it.” Here’s a beautiful image from the upcoming film.

The film has been commissioned by the 14-18 NOW which is the UK’s arts programme for the centenary of the First World War. Peter has had a passion for the First World War for a number of years and wanted to use his passion to create something like no one has ever seen.

Tricia Tuttle, BFI London Film Festival Artistic Director says, “A hundred years after the First World War, we know much about the horrific impact of this conflict on its soldiers, especially the brutal scale of the casualties which decimated a generation, but Peter’s film offers new understanding of the human experience of life at the front. Using original audio and moving image archive he allows the soldiers to tell their own stories. The work his team have done on the materials, adding colour and converting to 3D, is painstaking and beautiful. It makes these people from 100 years ago seem so alive and gives an uncanny sense the footage was shot recently. It’s an honour to host the World Premiere at the BFI London Film Festival.”

The film will be screened at the festival whilst simultaneously being shown across the UK in both 2D and 3D showings. See below for when and where you can buy tickets:

BFI Southbank Screenings:

• Wednesday 22nd August – BFI Patron (11.30am) / Champions booking opens (12.30pm)
• Thursday 23rd August – BFI Members booking opens (11.30am)
• Friday 24th August – Public booking opens (11.30am)

UK Wide Screenings

• Booking site goes live from 29th August Wednesday 29th August – UK wide Cinemas on sale (10.00am)

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HBO And IFP Launch A Fund To Develop New Writers

HBO Documentary Films and Independent Filmmaker Project have announced a new fund to enhance identify and nurture storytellers with fresh and compelling perspectives as they develop their work. Called the IFP/HBO New True Stories Funding Initiative, it has been created to sponsor grants for multi-format, non-fiction storytellers with development funds at the earliest stage of bringing new work to a visual format.

Supporting a wide range of filmmakers and journalists, across a wide spectrum of non-fiction genres as well as support them creating visual work whether it’s a feature film, short or other. This initiative is trying to foster and nurture new voices whilst creating compelling and diverse stories.

“We are excited to be expanding our partnership with HBO Documentary Films to include joint programmatic support for filmmakers and content creators on this important initiative,” says Joana Vicente, executive director of IFP, in an official statement. “HBO has been a longtime supporter of the IFP, and with HBO Docs’ rich history of championing non-fiction work, this grant will allow us to continue a strong tradition of supporting projects that are exploring even broader, new formats in non-fiction media.”

“The HBO Documentary Films team is thrilled to be partnering with IFP on this exciting new initiative,” said Nancy Abraham and Lisa Heller, executive vice presidents of HBO Documentary and Family Programming, in a statement. “Our team has a long history of working closely with IFP, which has an amazing capacity for identifying and supporting emerging talent with fresh ideas, and we’re honored to work with them to discover some exciting new voices coming from the non-fiction field.”

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Robin Williams’ Peers Discuss The Late Actor In A New Documentary

Steve Martin, Lewis Black, Billy Crystal, Pam Dawber, Whoopi Goldberg, Eric Idle, and David Letterman all feature in a new documentary about Robin Williams, talking about his career and life behind the camera. Here’s the new trailer for the HBO film.

Showing different sides of the legendary comic actor, director Marina Zenovich uses archive photos, interviews and stand-up footage to craft a documentary which delves deep into the mind of a troubled genius. The director, who has worked on Richard Pror and Roman Polanski, has experience with biographies of famous hollywood starlets 

The synopsis descirbes the film as a funny, intimate and heartbreaking portrait of one of the world’s most beloved and inventive comedians, ‘Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind’ takes us through his extraordinary life and career and reveals what drove him to give voice to the characters in his mind. Told largely by Robin himself, with a wealth of never-before-seen footage, and informed by in-depth interviews with those who loved and knew him. The film will premiere on HBO on 16th July.

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Craigslist Joe trailer

A Zach Galifianakis produced film has come to my attention after seeing this trailer recently. It’s called Craigslist Joe and it’s a story about a man who tries his best to communicate with those on the outside world rather than being confined to his laptop and social media. He uses Craigslist instead which, if you are unfamiliar with this site, it’s similar to Gum Tree where you have free adverts for all sorts of things such as cars, jobs, free things to give away, places  to stay, flats to rent, volunteer work, services, gigs and so on. So you can only imagine what he had to do to survive and meet the people that he meets on the way. Check out the trailer and see what you think.