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September 28, 2005
The penguin voyeurs' survival instincts: We huddled together for warmth
The NY Times has a long Paris dispatch on the perils of consorting with penguins: "The long journey to create and sell the film March of the Penguins was as pitiless as the ice-desert migration of the emperor penguins that waddled to cinematic triumph...
The French company that produced the movie struggled to avoid bankruptcy while the film was being made and confronted near disaster when its 2 cameramen were trapped in a deadly Antarctic blizzard... "I always kept the image in my mind of the long march and the struggle to survive," said Yves Darondeau, 40, one of three partners in Bonne Pioche. "Like the emperor penguin, we huddled together for warmth. It was extremely difficult, complicated, risky and full of anguish." ... The new-found popularity [of docs] has given filmmakers more confidence about the future, but financing remains elusive. One reason for optimism is the rapid development of new digital movie networks in many countries; they are intended to nurture specialty markets and slash film printing costs - an expense that has long stymied distributors and filmmakers. The networks, supported by a mix of public and private money, basically supply heavily subsidized digital projectors to theaters to entice exhibitors to show documentaries and non-Hollywood fare." [More tick-and-tock at the link.]
[Publicity photo: Jérôme Maison/Bonne Pioche Productions/Alliance de Production Cinématographique]
Posted by pride at September 28, 2005 01:38 AM
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