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The History of Cinema: 2010

Hollywood studios are foiled in their attempt to prevent internet users illegally downloading their movies when a judge rules that internet service provider iiNet is not responsible for illegal downloads carried out by its users. [MORE]

Melbourne Central City Studios announces it will change its name to Docklands Studios Melbourne ahead of a $10m State Government investment in modifications and upgrades at the site. [ADD] 

The release of Fabio Barreto’s Lula, the Son of Brazil, a biopic of the country’s incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, gives rise to complaints of political propaganda in an election year – despite the fact that the president is not standing for re-election. [MORE]

A restored print of the groundbreaking avant-garde film Limite (1930) receives a screening at the World Cinema Foundation Festival in Brooklyn, USA.   Restoration of the film, described by Cinemateca Brasileira as the greatest Brazilian film ever made, and once in danger of real being lost, began in 1959.   It was director Mário Peixoto’s only film. [ADD]

Bulgarian filmmakers stage a third protest over the Culture Ministry’s failure to commit to a filmmaking budget by staging a march from the Culture Ministry to the Council of Ministers building in Sofia. [ADD]

Denis Villeneuve’s Polytechnique wins nine awards at the 2010 Genie Awards, including Best Picture, Direction, Actress, and Supporting Actor. [MORE]

Comweb announces its intention to build a $20 million film production complex in Toronto. [MORE]

The government reminds cinema operators of their duty to ensure that at least two-thirds of the movies they exhibit are produced domestically.   The move comes after Hollywood blockbuster Avatar becomes the country’s highest grossing movie ever. [MORE]

Animator Te Wei dies of respiratory failure in Shanghai at the age of 95.   The only artist in China to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Animated Film Association (ASIFA), his best known work was the 1956 short The Conceited General. [ADD]

Crossing Hennessy, Tang Wei’s first film since she was reportedly blacklisted by the Chinese government for her appearance in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution in 2007, is selected as the opening night film for the 34^th Hong Kong International Film Festival on 21^st March. [MORE]

Actress Zhang Ziyi denies accusations of fraud relating to donations she promised to make to victims of the Sichuan Province earthquake.   Ms. Zhang is accused of donating only $123,000 of the £146,000 she pledged and of failing to deliver $1 million she said she hoped to receive from foreign donors. [ADD]

Local superhero movie Ip Man 2 sees off a challenge from Western superhero flick Iron Man 2 at the mainland box office.   It earns 100 million yuan (approx. £10.3 million) in its opening week (commencing 27^th April) while Iron an 2 (released on 7^th May) earns 60 million yuan (£6.1 million). [ADD]

Gabriele Muccino’s Kiss Me Again, a sequel to his 2001 hit The Last Kiss, wins the Best Film award at the 13^th Shanghai International Film Festival’s Golden Goblet Awards.   Best Director goes to Liu Jie for the drama Deep in the Clouds.   Ocean Heaven, the Chinese film favoured by the media, wins nothing. [MORE]

Feng Xiaogang’s film Aftershock, a drama about the devastation of one family by the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, is released breaks domestic box office records on its opening-day, earning $5.34 million.   It is also the first foreign-language film to be released by Imax. [ADD]

Zhao Shi, the deputy director of China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) announces that an age-appropriate rating system would not presently be ‘appropriate’ for the Chinese mainland. [ADD]

Resident Evil: Afterlife manages to get past China’s notoriously tough censors to obtain a rare national release for a horror film. [MORE]

Former president Vaclav Havel announces that he is to make a film based on his latest play, Leaving in June.   His wife Dagmar Havlová is scheduled to star in the film with support from Josef Abrham, Jaroslav Dusek and Eva Holubova.   Shooting is due to start in June 2010. [ADD]

Lars von Trier’s controversial Antichrist wins seven awards at the Robert Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Script, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound Design and Best Special Effects.   Lars Mikkelsen wins Best Actor for Headhunter while Henning Moritzen wins Best Supporting Actor for the same film.  Up is named Best US Film, while Slumdog Millionaire wins the Best non-US Foreign Film prize. [ADD]

Lars von Trier’s Antichrist wins five awards at this year’s Bodil Awards ceremony, including Best Danish Film.   However, von Trier doesn’t attend the ceremony, and the award is collected on his behalf by his wife, Bente. [MORE]

Janus Metz’s controversial documentary Armadillo, which won the Grand Prix in Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival, tops the Danish box office.   The film, which follows Danish soldiers in Afghanistan, features a scene in which the soldiers ambush and ‘finish off’ five Taliban that prompts a military enquiry into their actions. [ADD]

Klaus Härö’s Postia Pappi Jakobille (Letters To Father Jacob) wins four prizes – best feature, best director, best actor (Heikki Nousiainen) and best musical score – at the Jussi film awards.   Aleksi Mäkelä’s thriller Rööperi also wins four awards, including best supporting actor (Peter Franzen) and the audience prize. [MORE]

A Gala screening of the newly-restored, full-length version of Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic Metropolis takes place at Berlin's Friedrichstadtpalast.   The film is also beamed onto a huge screen at the Brandenburg Gate and accompanied by Berlin’s Radio Symphony Orchestra playing Gottfried Huppertz’s original score. [MORE]

Werner Schroeter, a leading director of the New German Cinema of the 1970s and a pioneer of gay film-making, dies at the age of 65 after an operation in Kassel.   He had been suffering from cancer. [ADD]

Exiled Iranian director Daryush Shokof, who had been missing for nearly two weeks, is discovered drenched near the Rhine River by three teenagers.   According to reports, the director claims he was abducted. [MORE]

Christoph Schlingensief, the enfant terrible of the German stage who directed such films as The German Chain-Saw Massacre and 100 Years of Hitler, dies of lung cancer at the age of 49. [ADD]

Yorgos Lanthimos’ film Dogtooth wins five awards, including Best Film and Best Director, at the 1^st Hellenic Film Academy Awards ceremony held at the Megaron in Athens. [MORE]

Teddy Chen’s action thriller Bodyguards and Assassins wins eight awards at the Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor. [MORE]

Tamás Dömötör’s second feature film, Czukor Show, is released.   Filmed in just 10 days, the film provides a modern take on Milán Füst’s 1914 stage play, The Unhappy Ones.   Zsolt Anger, Attila Árpa, Szilvia Csonka, Balázs Czukor and Kata Péter star. [ADD]

The 42^nd Hungarian Film Week, which was scheduled to be staged in Budapest in early February 2011, is cancelled due to the financial problems of its organizer, the Motion Picture Public Foundation of Hungary (MMKA). [ADD]

Film producer Gábor P. Koltai is arrested on suspicion of tax fraud amounting to Ft2.3 billion. [ADD]

Ragnar Bragason’s Bjarnfreðarson (Mr Bjarnfredarson) wins six prizes at the EDDA Film and Television Awards, including Best Film and Best Director.   The Icelandic nation also wins an honorary award for its ‘strong support of Icelandic film through the years', as a symbol of EDDA’s objection to recent cutbacks in government funding of the industry. [MORE]

Hrönn Marinósdóttir, the director of the Reykjavík International Film Festival (RIFF) reveals she was summoned to the Chinese Embassy in Iceland, where it was requested she refrain from screening the American film When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun, a documentary examining the relationship between China and Tibet.   Marinósdóttir refused the request. [ADD]

Raj Kumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots becomes the first movie in Bollywood history to earn more than 300 Crore with a worldwide gross of Rs 315 crores (£42.55 million) after 19 days. [MORE]

Controversy surrounds the planned release in May 2010 of Anil Sharma’s Dunno Y … Na Jaane Kyun, the first Bollywood film to show a gay kiss.   The film, a reflection of a more liberal attitude amongst Indian filmmakers towards kissing and nudity, follows the legalisation of homosexuality in 2009. [ADD]

Film producer Tahir Hussain, the father of Bollywood star Aamir Khan dies from a cardiac arrest at his home in Bandra. [ADD]  

Actor and director Cochin Haneefa, who appeared in over 300 films, dies in a private hospital in Chennai. [ADD]  

Police in Mumbai arrest 1,000 members of the militant Shiv Sena party for to prevent violent confrontations over the release of Shah Rukh Khan’s latest film, My Name is Khan after the actor publicly regrets the absence of Pakistan players in the Indian Premier League Twenty20 cricket tournament. [MORE]

Despite threats of disruption from the Shiv Sena party, Shah Rukh Khan’s My Name is Khan goes on general release. [MORE]

Bollywood romance Kites goes on general release worldwide, one week before the release of a version re-mixed to appeal to western audiences by Hollywood director Brett Ratner.   The re-mixed version dispenses with 40 minutes of music, comedy and action sequences to focus on the film’s love story. [ADD]

A number of top Bollywood stars, including Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan reportedly pull out of attending the three-day IIFA awards ceremony in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in protest at alleged war crimes committed during that country’s civil war with the Tamil Tigers. [MORE]

Dabangg becomes the seventeenth most popular Bollywood film of all time, giving the film’s star, Salman Khan, the distinction of appearing in four of Bollywood’s top twenty films of all time. [ADD]

The world’s two largest film industries – Hollywood and Bollywood – sign a co-operation pact in Hollywood for the production and distribution of their films. [ADD]

Award-winning director Jafar Panahi is refused permission to leave the country to attend the Berlin Film Festival as an honorary guest. [MORE]

Jafar Panahi and his wife and daughter are arrested by government security forces after they raid his house.   Fifteen guests who were in the house at the time are also detained. [MORE]

The International Campaign for Human Rights reports that director Jafar Panahi, imprisoned for his support of Iran’s opposition party, has embarked on a hunger strike to demand access to his family and a lawyer, and unconditional release until his trial. [MORE]

Filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who has been imprisoned since 1^st March 2010, is released on bail reportedly set at $200,000. [MORE]

Tehran censors ban Certified Copy, director Abbas Kiarostami’s new film, due to star Juliette Binoche’s ‘attire.’   Both Kiarostami and Binoche were outspoken in their condemnation of the Iranian authorities for imprisoning director Jafar Panahi during the recent Cannes Film Festival. [ADD]

Director Asghar Farhadi denounces the government’s decision to block production of his latest film, Separation of Nader and Simin, due to alleged remarks he made during a ceremony at the Cinema House in Tehran. [ADD]

British Director Mike Leigh cancels a teaching assignment in Israel in protest over the country’s proposed loyalty oath bill. [MORE]

Dozens of young cinemagoers suffer panic attacks after watching the horror film Paranormal Activity.   The film is on general release with no age restrictions. [MORE]

Culture minister Sandro Bondi rejects an invitation to the Cannes Film Festival in protest at its decision to screen Sabina Guzzanti’s Draquila, a satirical documentary about the L’Aquila earthquake. [MORE]

Susi Cecchi D'Amico, the screenwriter of such screen epics as Bicycle Thieves and The Leopard, dies in Rome at the age of 96. [ADD]

Jury President Quentin Tarantino is accused of favouritism at the Venice Film Festival after the Golden Lion is awarded to his former lover Sofia Coppola for Somewhere, and Best Director and Script prizes are awarded to his friend Alex de la Iglesia for Balada Triste de Trompeta. [MORE]

Cinemas, theatres, concert halls, opera houses and circuses are all closed in a 24-hour strike in protest at proposed arts spending cuts.   The government intends to impose cuts of €146m (£125m) from performing arts subsidies in 2011. [ADD]

95-year-old director Mario Monicelli, one of the pioneers of the Commedia all’Italiana (Italian-style comedy) leaps to his death from a window of the San Giovanni hospital in Rome days after being admitted with terminal prostate cancer.   He was best known for such movies as I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street) (1958) and Amici Miei (My Friends) (1975). [ADD]

Shunji Iwai’s Indie music drama Bandage, which features Jin Akanishi, the singer with boy band Kat-Tun, in his film debut, is released. [ADD]

Producer-distributor-exhibitor Cine Qua Non (CQN) files for bankruptcy with debts of £32.86 (Y4.73b). [ADD]

The mayor of the city of Taiji, the location for the documentary film The Cove, which chronicles the mass slaughter of dolphins for meat which is then sold as whale meat, criticises the decision to award the film the Best Documentary Oscar at this year’s ceremony.   ‘This film has mistakes of fact,’ he declares at a press conference. [ADD]

Despite canceling a screening of The Cove scheduled for 26^th June at a cinema in Tokyo, Unplugged Inc, the distributor of the Oscar-winning documentary, insists it will persevere with screenings.   Right-wing protestors object to the film’s depiction of an annual dolphin hunt in the southern Japanese town of Taiji. [MORE]

Eizo Kyoto, a production company based in Kyoto, shuts down after 38 years in business, following the decision of 88-year-old chief Yoshinobu Nishioka to retire. [ADD]

Plans to build a ‘Wellywood’ sign at Miramar, where The Lord of the Rings was partly filmed, hit a snag when the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, owners of the famous ‘Hollywood’ landmark on which the proposed sign is to be based, threatens legal action for trademark infringement. [MORE]

Taika Waititi’s coming-of-age comedy-drama Boy becomes the country’s highest-grossing domestic film when it passes the box-office takings of $7.047 million earned by the previous record-holder, The World’s Fastest Indian. [ADD]

Thousands of New Zealanders take to the streets of Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch to protest over the possibility of production of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit moving out of the country following problems with the local union. [ADD]

Shirley Frimpong Manso’s Perfect Picture wins the Best Picture award at the 2010 African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) in Nigeria’s Bayelsa State.   Best Actor goes to Ramsay Noah for his performance in Figurine. [MORE]

Kate Henshaw-Nuttall tops a list of the highest-earning Nollywood divas.   Her wealth is estimated at N67 million (approx £274,000). [MORE]

The comedy film Tere bin Laden, in which pop singer Ali Zafar plays an ambitious TV journalist who attempts to set up a fake interview with Osama bin-Laden using a look-alike in order to secure a visa to America, is banned due to fears that it might provoke terrorist attacks in the country. [ADD]

Borys Lankosz’s dark comedy Rewers (Reverse) wins five awards at the Polish Eagles Awards, including Best Polish Film, Best Leading Actress and Best Screenplay.   Wojciech Smarzowski wins the Best Director award for his thriller Dom zly (The Dark House), and screenwriter Jerzy Stefan Stawinski receives a Lifetime Achievement award. [ADD]

1960s film and television star Elzbieta Czyzewska dies of oesophageal cancer at New York Presbyterian Hospital at the age of 72.   Czyzewska shot to fame in her home country after starring in Jerzy Skolimowski’s 1961 film Erotica, but became an outcast when she married American journalist David Halberstam. [ADD]

Alejandro Amenabar’s Agora is the most successful Spanish film at the domestic box office in 2009 with a take of $30 million.   Other local films Planet 51 and Cell 211 also do well in a record-breaking year at the domestic box office. [ADD]

The Catalonian regional parliament pass a law obliging cinemas to screen at least 50% of foreign films with Catalan subtitles or dubbing, much to the anger of exhibitors.   The law comes into force on 1^st January 2011. [ADD]

Luis García Berlanga, one of Spain’s most celebrated filmmakers, dies at his home in Madrid at the age of 89. [ADD]

The Russian government presents the United States Library of Congress with digitally restored copies of 10 silent American films previously believed to have been lost. [MORE]

Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer’s debut feature, a prison drama called R, wins the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film and the international critics’ FIPRESCI Prize at the 33^rd Göteborg International Film Festival. [MORE]

Séverine Cornamusaz’s debut feature Animal Heart wins the Best Feature Quartz Award at this year’s Swiss Film Awards, while Antonio Buil, the film’s star, is voted Best Actor. [MORE]

The Taiwanese film When Love Comes wins the Best Feature Film Award at the 47^th Golden Horse Awards ceremony in Taoyuan county. [MORE]

The omnibus film Kars creates a media controversy when it is shown at the Jerusalem Film Festival at a time when anti-Israeli sentiment in Turkey is running high following the deaths of nine Turkish activists upon an aid boat stormed by Israeli forces in May 2010. [ADD]

Imagenation Abu Dhabi announces it will develop, finance and produce Sea Shadow, its’ first Emirati production.   The film, written by Mohamed Hassan Ahmad, is scheduled to begin filming in October/November 2010. [ADD]