GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The US House of Representatives homeland security committee looks set to investigate claims by a New York Times columnist that Sony Pictures is producing a film about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011 and that the filmmakers have had access to US government footage of the raid. Maureen Dowd’s column claims that the film, made by “The Hurt Locker” director and writer team of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, will be used to gain support for Barack Obama in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election in the US. The White House says both claims are unfounded.
The Swedish Millennium Films, based on the novels by Swedish crime writer Stieg Larsson, have generated an increase in jobs, marketing, tourism and trade in the Stockholm area, according to a report (pdf) published by the Swedish-based Cloudberry group in collaboration with Oxford Research. They have also saved the city several million dollars in advertising.
The films have been watched by 20 million people, the region has become more popular and tourism is up: to reach an equivalent audience with purchased advertising time, according to Business Wire (BW), the Stockholm region would have to spend nearly CHF144 million.
Production costs of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, “The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”, and “The Girl who Played with Fire” totaled around CHF13 million for wages and services such as catering, housing, transportation, and location rental.
Olof Zetterberg, chief executive of Stockholm Business Region, told BW. “This study confirms that film is also a strategic tool for marketing Stockholm internationally.”
Anders Ekegren, chairman of Filmregion Stockholm-Mälardalen argues in BW that “the study shows that film is virtually unbeatable when it comes to marketing a region and a city. We also see the power of films to create jobs and economic growth at the local and regional levels.”
Links to other sites: Business Wire, Earth Times
By Jared Bloch
Writer/Director Peter Kerekes
What happens to the war effort when the Army chef spoils the food? As one character in Peter Kerekes “Cooking History” proclaims, “there is no war without food.” And maybe no successful war campaign without good food.
The premise for this alternately wry and sobering movie evolved out of a conversation between Kerekes and his father. “The idea was to collect stories from ordinary people, and to show how they can, and have changed history,” Kerekes told Geneva Lunch during a conversation on the final day of the 2009 Visions du Réel Film Festivalin Nyon.
