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2004

Afghanistan

– The government awards $500,000 to the Afghan Film Organisation to support the production of motion pictures. [MORE] [ADD]

Argentina

16/4 -

Lisandro Alonso's Los Muertos (The Dead) is released. Argentino Vargas stars as a killer released from prison. [MORE] [ADD]

6/5 -

La Niña santa (The Holy Girl), Lucrecia Martel's follow-up to La Ciénaga (2001), is released.   Mercedes Morán plays a 16-year-old girl who develops an obsession with a middle-aged doctor (Carlos Belloso). [MORE] [ADD]

29/7 -

Walter Salles' Diarios de motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries) is released.   The film tells the story of a young Ché Guevara's travels around South America in the early 50s.  Gael García Bernal stars as Guevera, with Rodrigo de la Serna as his traveling companion, biochemist Alberto Granado. [MORE] [ADD]

Australia

5/8 -

Australian cultural groups call on the government to block ratification of a free trade agreement agreement between the United States and Australia that was signed between the heads of state on 3^rd August. [MORE] [ADD]

– Producer Anthony Buckley finds a negative of Ted Kotcheff’s 1971 film, Outback, in a shiping container in Pittsburgh marked ‘For Destruction.’ The film had been believed lost for 10 years. [MORE] [ADD]

Canada

11/9 -

Beyond the Sea, Kevin Spacey’s biopic of 50s singer Bobby Darin, premieres at the Toronto Film Festival.   327 other titles are to be screened at the festival, including Spike Lee's Sucker Free City, Pedro Almodóvar's Bad Education, Walter Salles' Diarios de motocicleta and Richard Eyre's Stage Beauty. [MORE] [ADD]

4/10 -

The New York Daily News's "Rush & Molloy" column reports that director Ang Lee and writer Larry McMurtry have fallen out over changes made by Lee to McMurtry's script for Brokeback Mountain, the story of a homosexual love affair between two cowboys played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.   The film is currently shooting in Calgary. [MORE] [ADD]

22/10 -

Jerry Ciccoritti's adaptation of Tom Walmsley’s play, Blood, is released.   Filmed in one continuous take, twice a day for four days, the film stars Emily Hampshire and Jacob Tierney as siblings with addiction problems. [MORE] [ADD]

Germany

25/11 -

Hans Weingartner 's Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei (The Edukators) is released.   Danile Bruhl and Stipe Erceg star as a pair of activists who break into wealthy households and move the furniture around while the owners are out.   Things begin to go awry when they unexpectedly find they have a hostage on their hands (Burghart Klaussner).   Julia Jentsch also stars. [MORE] [ADD]

30/12 -

The Berlin Film Festival announces that it intends screening a digitally restored version of Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin (1925), including scenes censored from the original theatrical version by the Soviet government, on the 12^th and 13^th February 2005.   The film will be accompanied by the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg playing a revised version of the original score by Edmund Meisel. [MORE] [ADD]

Holland

19/4 -

A print of the 1922 silent film Beyond the Rocks, starring Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson, is discovered in Haarlem.   The Amsterdam Film Museum announces that the film, which was believed to have been lost, is undergoing restoration and will be screened during the second Filmmuseum Biennial in April 2005 with a new score. [MORE] [ADD]

Hong Kong

15/7 -

Yimou Zhang's Shi mian mai fu (House of Flying Daggers) is released.  Takeshi Kaneshiro and Andy Lau star as military agents attempting to capture a resistance leader through the previous leader’s blind daughter (Ziyi Zhang). [MORE] [ADD]

29/9 -

2046, Kar Wai Wong's sumptuous quasi-sequel to In the Mood for Love (2000) is released.   Tony Leung Chiu Wai returns as the hero of the first film, living now in a run-down Hong Kong hotel in the 60s.   Ziyi Zhang also stars as a good-time girl neighbour who falls badly for him. [MORE] [ADD]

23/12 -

Stephen Chow’s kung fu comedy Gung fu (Kung Fu Hustle) is released.   Chow stars as Sing, a would-be gangster who's trying to impress the notorious Axe gang. [MORE] [ADD]

Hungary

26/8 -

The Wall Street Journal reports that film producer Andrew Vajna has joined forces with shopping mall developer Sandor Demjan to construct the world’s largest film studio in Etyek, approximately 20 miles from Budapest. [MORE] [ADD]

Iran

16/1 -

Jafar Panahi Talaye sorkh (Crimson Gold), which shows a botched heist before flashing back to outline the events leading up to it, is released in the United States.   Hossain Emadeddin and Kamyar Sheisi star. [MORE] [ADD]

Italy

10/9 -

Gianni Amelio’s Le Chiavi di casa (The House Keys), in which a developmentally challenged teenager is accompanied by the father he has never met for medical tests, is released.   Charlotte Rampling stars as a woman the father meets at the hospital. [MORE] [ADD]

13/9 -

Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake wins the Golden Lion award at this year’s Venice Film Festival.   Alejandro Amenábar’s Mar adentro wins the Jury Grand Prize. [MORE] [ADD]

24/9 -

Writer-director Paolo Sorrentino’s enigmatic Le Conseguenze dell'amore (The Consequences of Love), starring Toni Sevillo, is released. [MORE] [ADD]

Japan

6/3 -

Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, a sequel to the cult 1995 animé hit, is released. [MORE] [ADD]

Macedonia

– Darko Mitrevski’s Bal-Can-Can, which will go on to become Macedonia’s highest grossing film, is released. [MORE] [ADD]

Niger

18/2 -

French documentary filmmaker Jean Rouch dies in a car accident in Bimi N’Konni.   He was 86. [MORE] [ADD]

Norway

– The Norwegian Film Institute becomes the first in the world to offer a video-on-demand service for digital and broadband distribution of Norwegian films.  [MORE] [ADD]

Russia

27/6 -

Timur Bekmambetov’s Hollywood style fantasy horror Nochnoy dozor (Night Watch) is released.   For a short period it becomes Russia’s top-grossing movie of all time. [MORE] [ADD]

Senegal

15/5 -

Ousmane Sembene’s Moolaadé premieres at the Cannes Film Festival.   Fatoumata Coulibaly stars as a woman offering shelter to young women fleeing their ‘purification’ rituals. [MORE] [ADD]

Serbia

30/6 -

Emir Kusturica's Zivot je cudo (Life is a Miracle), starring Slavko Stimac is released.    [MORE] [ADD]

12/9 -

Goran Paskaljevic's San zimske noci (Midwinter Night's Dream), which he co-wrote with Filip David premieres at the Toronto Film Festival.   Lazar Ristovski stars as an ex-convict who returns home after ten years to discover a woman (Jasna Zalica) and her autistic daughter (Jovana Mitic) squatting in his house. [MORE] [ADD]

Singapore

29/3 -

The Media Development Authority introduce a revised classification scheme, adding an M18 rating. [MORE] [ADD]

Spain

19/3 -

Pedro Almodóvar's quirky noir-melodrama La Mala educación (Bad Education), is released.   Gael García Bernal and Fele Martínez star. [MORE] [ADD]

3/9 -

Alejandro Amenábar's Mar adentro (The Sea Inside) is released.   Javier Bardem plays a quadriplegic campaigning for the right to die. [MORE] [ADD]

Switzerland

Apr -

The government passes a law banning the release of films on video before or during their theatrical run. [MORE] [ADD] 

7/12 -

The government agrees a film co-production treaty with France which reduces the required finance from Swiss producers to 10% of the required total. [MORE] [ADD]

Taiwan

2/4 -

Yin-jung Chen’s gay sex comedy, Shi qi sui de tian kong (Formula 17), is released.   It is the only Taiwanese fiction film to make money on the domestic market in 2004. [MORE] [ADD]

17/9 -

Writer-Director Ming-liang Tsai's atmospheric Bu san (Goodbye, Dragon Inn) is released in the United States.   The film, which takes place during the last night of the Fu-Ho cinema in Taipei where the martial arts film Dragon Inn is being screened, features performances from Kang-Sheng Lee, Kiyorobu Mitamura and Shiang-chyi Chen. [MORE] [ADD]

Thailand

24/6 -

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Sud pralad (Tropical Malady) is released.   Banlop Lomnoi and Sakda Kaewbuadee star. [MORE] [ADD]

10/11 -

A new kind of cinema, in which films are delivered by Thaicom satellite to individual rooms of various size which can accommodate 2, 8 or 21 people, is launched in Ratchaburi. [MORE] [ADD]

Turkmenistan

– An American Turkmen film festival takes place in Ashgabat. [MORE] [ADD]

Uganda

– Amakula Kampala, Uganda’s first film festival, is staged in Kampala. [MORE] [ADD]

Uruguay

6/8 -

Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll’s tragic-comedy, Whisky, in which a 60-year-old owner of a sock factory in Montevideo (Andres Pazos) has one of his employees (Mirella Pascual) pose as his wife during a visit from his more successful brother, is released.. [MORE] [ADD]

Yemen

Feb -

On the first day of shooting A New Day in Old Sana’a, Yemeni’s first feature film, a group of Islamic extremists storm the set.   Production continues under armed guard. [MORE] [ADD]