Lattarulo has monitored the evolution of the tax credit and the growing relevance it has acquired in supporting Italian productions. He outlined how the scheme has changed over the years, what went wrong in 2024, and how recent corrective measures are addressing key concerns raised by the industry.

From Temporary Relief to Structural Backbone
The Italian tax credit system was officially introduced in 2009 following the implementation of fiscal incentives included in the 2008 Finance Law. “Initially, it offered a 15% tax rebate on production costs for Italian films, capped at EUR €3.5 million (USD $4 million) per company annually,” Lattarulo recalled. “It was supposed to be temporary, running from 2008 to 2010, but its immediate impact led to its institutionalization.”

The pivotal moment came with the approval of Law 220/2016, commonly referred to as the “Cinema Law,” which established a permanent Film and Audiovisual Fund to support domestic and international production. “This law solidified the tax credit’s role, increasing the rebate rate up to 40% and broadening its application to include documentaries, animation, and even web or TV content,” he noted.

The effect was striking. According to data from Italy’s Ministry of Culture, the number of projects benefiting from tax credits rose from 191 in 2018 to an average of 600 between 2019 and 2022, peaking at 956 projects in 2023. However, this production boom brought side effects: “Labour costs and production expenses surged—by as much as 46% over five years, according to E-Media data presented at Rome’s MIA Market in 2024,” Lattarulo observed.

The 2024 Crisis and a Sector at a Standstill
By early 2024, the production landscape had changed dramatically. Although Lattarulo refrained from confirming the widely circulated estimate that over 60% of productions were stalled—no official data has been published in this regard—he acknowledged a sharp slowdown, particularly for small and mid-sized independent outfits. “The uncertainty came from regulatory changes and a lack of clarity on how to access the revised tax credit scheme,” he remarked.

The changes stemmed from a new inter-ministerial decree issued on 10 July 2024, which replaced the earlier decree from February 2021. “This reform introduced stricter financial, fiscal, and commercial requirements, making it significantly harder for smaller companies to qualify,” Lattarulo pointed out. The reforms were put in place to prioritize “quality” productions featuring Italian talent and stories, while capping payouts for international co-productions at EUR €18 million (USD $20.9 million) and local productions at EUR €9 million (USD $10.45 million). These reforms were so disruptive that they triggered widespread backlash across the industry, eventually leading to political negotiations and the development of a “corrective decree.”

This corrective decree did not scrap the July reforms but instead adjusted them. “It aimed to soften the access requirements—especially those that effectively made the tax credit selective, when it had always functioned as an automatic support tool,” he commented.

One core issue was the redefinition of the tax credit itself. “The system is shifting from a model of automatic ‘starting financing’ to one more akin to ‘gap financing’,” Lattarulo clarified. Under the new rules, productions are required to meet more precise eligibility criteria, including theatrical release obligations, reduced state aid ceilings, and tighter definitions of eligible expenses.

Impact Across the Value Chain
The updated regulations have affected producers most directly. “They now need to focus far more on compliance with collective labor agreements, administrative accuracy, and structured financing strategies,” Lattarulo emphasised. For instance, every invoice over EUR €1,000 (USD $1,160) must now explicitly state the project title to be considered an eligible expenditure under the scheme. “It’s a significant administrative burden, particularly for smaller teams.”

Distributors and audiovisual media service providers (SMAVs) are also affected—though indirectly—through their financing obligations. “In co-productions or acquisition deals, they’re now required to invest a minimum share of the total budget—at least 20% in some cases,” he added. Contracts must also clarify rights ownership, holdbacks, and provide transparent viewership data.

Among the most controversial provisions of the July 2024 decree was a clause requiring a distribution deal with one of Italy’s top 20 distributors—labelled “primary distribution companies”—prior to applying for tax credit. “This was a serious obstacle for many independent producers,” noted Lattarulo. “Fortunately, the corrective decree has now scrapped this clause.”

Exhibitors are affected too, particularly through new circuiting rules that dictate how and where tax-credit-supported films must be shown. “While exceptions exist for objective limitations, these rules do impact release strategies and the programming of theatres,” he observed.

A Crucial Distinction: Market vs Selective Projects
Lattarulo stressed the importance of distinguishing between two main categories of supported works: “market-driven” and “selective” projects. The former are evaluated primarily based on their commercial potential, requiring solid distribution deals and financial coverage. The latter, often classified as culturally or artistically valuable, benefit from selective funding mechanisms either from the Italian government or transnational bodies like the EU or the Council of Europe.

“Selective projects can qualify for up to 80% in public support in some cases, and successful titles may trigger mandatory reinvestment clauses,” he noted. For producers, the key difference lies in the required financing strategy and the level of creative independence permitted.

Circuiting and distribution obligations differ based on whether a project is deemed commercial or selective—and sometimes even based on production budget thresholds.

In a move that has drawn concern from producers, there are also talks of allowing the state to acquire equity stakes in rights and revenues of projects supported by selective funding—after production costs have been recovered.

A Welcome Step Towards Clarity
Asked whether the corrective decree had adequately addressed the industry’s concerns, Lattarulo didn’t hesitate: “Absolutely.” The adjustments reflect the efforts of political stakeholders and working groups within the sector. “This decree demonstrates responsiveness to the realities of those working in production, distribution, and exhibition. It offers clarity, flexibility, and a path forward.”

That said, he warned that ongoing dialogue and monitoring remain essential: “We can’t consider this the final step. The next phase must focus on fine-tuning implementation, simplifying access further, and ensuring that independent voices aren’t squeezed out of the system.”

For now, however, Italy’s production sector appears to be slowly finding its footing again. With clearer rules in place and excessive barriers removed, Italian producers hope to return to what they do best: making films that resonate at home and abroad.

Update (16 July 2025) – Earlier in July 2025, Italy’s film sector was rocked by a scandal that led to the resignation of longtime head of the Italian Ministry of Culture’s film department, Nicola Borrelli. The controversy centers on a EUR €863,595 (USD $100,3340) tax credit granted to a feature film, “Stelle della Notte,” which was never actually produced. The lead producer linked to this fake project is a 46-year-old United States citizen, Charles Francis Kaufmann (alias Rexal Ford). Kaufmann was arrested in Greece and is currently under investigation for a double homicide in Rome involving a woman and her infant daughter, whose bodies were found in Villa Pamphili Park. Kaufmann’s involvement in the fraudulent tax credit application through his company Tintagel Films has intensified scrutiny of Italy’s tax credit system. Authorities have pledged stronger oversight to prevent further abuses, while assuring that the international production rebate program remains unaffected and fully operational.

The post Italy’s Film Tax Credit Reform: Unpacking the Challenges with Producer Francesco Lattarulo appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

Mr Abdukhalikov, who also chairs the Tashkent International Film Festival, said a US $30 million deal had been inked with the Danmon Group to supply state-of-the-art studio technology. The agreement struck with the Danish broadcast and media solutions provider will see equipment for broadcast television, film, and commercial productions delivered to Tashkent and Samarkand to stock an ambitious new studio building program. 

“Before 2016, the cinema industry in Uzbekistan was not developed at all,” Mr Abdukhalikov said. “But this is Uzbekistan’s new era, and our president announced a new programme for cinema development. Not only cinema development, but the development of every sector in the country.”

Under the supervision of Abdukhalikov, the freshly invigorated national studio has produced a string of critically acclaimed films, including “Scorpion” (2018), “Hot Bread” (2019), “To The Ends Of The Earth” (2019), ”2000 Songs Of Farida” (2020), and “I’m Not A Terrorist” (2021).

“We have achieved the complete reconstruction of the UzbekFilm studios, which were totally destroyed. Everything was abandoned and neglected. If you look inside now, there is a big TV studio, it’s brand new.”

“We are also planning to construct a cinema city, which would not be taxed at all, like a freeport,” Mr Abdukhalikov continued. “So, with the rebate system and the tax-free system, we think that they are going to give us fantastic results.”  

The turnaround under Abdukhalikov’s stewardship has been profound, with UzbekFilm’s output making a marked contribution to Uzbekistan’s economic renaissance and acting as a cultural masthead to attract a growing influx of foreign direct investment. Jumping an impressive 37% in 2019 from 10.7% the year before, FDI contributed $9.3 billion to the Uzbek economy pre-Covid. However, the government is looking to book even more impressive gains, with this opening salvo of capital forming part of an ambitious package to attract $120 billion of investment over the next three years.

Sophie Ibbotson, Uzbekistan’s National Tourism Ambassador to the UK, said, “To attract investment, Uzbekistan is building its international brand. That requires investing in the arts so Uzbekistanis can have the skills they need to tell their own stories and sell their own country through film, television, music, fashion, social media, and scholarship.”

With production space currently at a premium in Uzbekistan’s capital, Mr Abdukhalikov said a deal was in the works to secure a further US $100 million investment to build studios in Tashkent and Samarkand to service the growing national film and television markets, as well as providing studio space for foreign productions making use of Uzbekistan’s relatively unexplored locations. 

With a population of 1.4 million, Tashkent is the largest city in the region. Other nations in Central Asia, which includes Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, have lagged behind Uzbekistan for inward investment, presenting a huge opportunity to a nation keen to utilise its resources to take a more central position on the world stage and shake off defunct Soviet ties. 

The studios are slated to begin construction this year.

The post CJ Exclusive: Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Bids to Be Crowned Capital of Central Asia’s Film Industry appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

Mr Rustamov said, “Uzbekistan is investing heavily in film, television, and the performing arts. Our studio and production facilities are some of the finest in the world, but we continue to invest in cinema because we have a rich cinematic history dating back more than a century, from which to draw influence and expertise.”

Senior government figures had earlier confirmed that plans to increase tax rebates from 20% to 30% had been submitted to the legislature for approval. When implemented, the tax incentives will propel Uzbekistan’s offer to film and television producers to the apex of international league tables. 

The Central Asian nation’s long and storied history of cinema production began under the Russian tsars and continued into the Soviet and Russian Federal eras. However, the Uzbek Government has had something of a hard time persuading foreign productions from India, China, the UK, United States, and Europe to venture into Uzbekistan under the current 20% regime, sitting, as it does, some 5% below competitors with better developed production infrastructures.

Although California, New York and the UK all offer 25% tax relief for qualifying productions, the landscape could be set for a radical upheaval, with Uzbekistan planning to up the ante with an offering of ultra-modern studio services and post-production suites in tandem with the 30% rebate, with at least one supersized sound stage planned to be solely dedicated to ‘historical epics’. An opening investment of USD $100 million will soon be deposited to begin construction of the studios this year, with the head of UzbekFilm revealing  that plans are also afoot to build a ‘cinema city’ that will be entirely tax exempt.

The Uzbek government is keen to broadcast to foreign film and television producers just what an undiscovered frontier the nation is as a filming and production location, with much of the ancient architecture and its surrounding terrain unexplored by location managers and scouts. Littered with stunning and expertly preserved Timurid-period architecture dating from the 14^th to 16^th centuries, many of Uzbekistan’s ancient sites are characterised by complex blue and turquoise tilework, with the colours symbolising the mystical depths of the universe. 

A Promising Future

Once at the heart of the fabled Silk Road, a 4,000-mile trade route connecting China with the Mediterranean, Tashkent is now at the heart of a country primed to erupt with foreign investment, with cash inflow increasing tenfold in the last six years.

“Our outlook is global and forward thinking,” Mr Rustmanov said. “Whilst we nurture tomorrow’s artists and creatives, we also honour and preserve our millennia-old heritage so that it may be enjoyed for millennia to come.”

The sector has been resurgent since Firdavs Abdukhalikov took over supervision of UzbekKino, the national cinema agency, in 2016. He and a dedicated team have spent years reviving the department, with their mammoth task complicated by decades of neglect under Soviet leadership. However, his efforts are starting to bear fruit, particularly since his appointment to the position of Director-General of the Tashkent International Film Festival, with its 15^th iteration recently welcoming a host of talent from across the globe.

Mr Rustmanov said, “Uzbekistan is truly unique: a warm, friendly, and welcoming nation, rich with history, culture, and stunning locations. As the world changes, Uzbekistan is at the forefront of developing our creative sectors to offer an experience to film and television producers that is unmatched.”

Uzbekistan’s President, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, included aid for the film and television industries in his 2021 re-election pitch to voters, meaning there are expectations amongst media businesses that the country will undergo a marked improvement in foreign footfall, international distribution, and inward investment. 

With this being his final interview before completing his productive stint in London, Ambassador Rustmanov’s colleagues and commentators have noted that he has been a particularly effective builder of relationships in the creative industries and has long been a staunch proponent of developing strong ties with the UK and US during his time in the capital. 

Mr Rustamov previously told Diplomat Magazine, “Uzbekistan is open for business and is positioned in the centre of the huge Central Asia market. We have the most diversified economy in our region, in addition to human capital, and Uzbekistan is highly focused on strengthening its relationship with the UK.”

The post CJ Exclusive: Uzbekistan Eyes a Bright Future with Film & TV Rebates Set to Rise to 30% appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

Despite a less-than-optimal global climate and several deferrals of the movie’s original release plan, the highly anticipated sci-fi thriller starring John David Washington and Robert Pattison grossed a robust $53 million international debut in all 41 territories it opened this weekend. “Tenet” seems to have generated a promising élan for the new, capacity-restricted moviegoing experience, giving exhibitors worldwide reasons to be optimistic.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the battle for cinema viewers’ attention has never been more fierce, likely making bespoke cinema experiences the new norm. “Tenet”’s results attest to that: audiences forked over to see the blockbuster in the best quality possible, with the premium IMAX format grossing $5million from IMAX alone, or 9.4% of the films total takings, despite representing just one per cent of screens.

Unsurprisingly, the 22nd episode of the CJCinemaSummit (Thursday, 27 August, 2020) focused on the cinema industry’s biggest release in months, with a special attention paid to the IMAX and 70mm premium large film format. Hosts Patrick von Sychowski and J. Sperling Reich were joined by Craig Dehmel (EVP/Head of Global Distribution, IMAX Entertainment) and David Keighley (Chief Quality Guru and President Emeritus IMAX Post/DKP Inc.).

Apart from “Tenet”, which served as a major talking point throughout the episode, another movie that has managed to put many overseas cinemas back in full swing is China’s riveting war epic “The Eight Hundred”. The Guan Hu-directed film, which was entirely shot with IMAX digital cameras, was the highest grossing film in the world over the weekend, soaring to more than a $277 million cumulative.

Craig Dehmel kicked off the panel discussion expressing his excitement for the return of the big screen after a strenuous few months with no more than 30 IMAX screens open around the world. Fortunately, in mid-July, South Korean action thriller “Peninsula” marked the beginning of the return to the (new) normal for the IMAX Corporation, having wrangled over $32 million worldwide.

IMAX’s recent figures confirm audiences’ eagerness to continue watching films on the biggest of big screens. “By the middle of August, we were up to $3 million,” revealed Dehmel. “With the release of “The Eight Hundred” last weekend, we had our biggest weekend yet where we did about $7.7 million overall.”

The conversation moved on to focus on “Tenet”, with Dehmel asserting that Christopher Nolan himself was IMAX’s best marketing asset on the movie. “He’s very complimentary of the IMAX experience, and he very much wants people to see the movie the way he intended,” he noted.

Dehmel went on to mention that despite a strong audience appetite for the premium moviegoing experience, which was demonstrated by “Tenet”’s soaring pre-sales figures across markets, current capacity limitations may be hindering the company’s ability to reach the same kind of high index that it has had on past Nolan films. “In some markets, you have 50% capacity, while in others, such as Canada, you have a 50-person-maximum,” said Dehmel. “We’re reaching capacity so quickly that it’s difficult for us to hit the same kind of high index that we’ve had on past Nolan films,” he added.

On the other hand, Deheml explained that reduced availability over the weekend will likely create more a consistent, steady box office throughout the rest of the week. “What I think will happen is that, because there’s less availability on the weekends, you’ll start to see shows fill up on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights,” explained Deheml.

Last week’s CJCinemaSummit panel also discussed the difficulties experienced with completing the post production and release of “Tenet” in the midst of a global pandemic. David Keighley, who worked directly with Christopher Nolan on the movie, revealed that the process “was daunting.”

“Nobody got sick. We were very careful, everybody’s temperature was taken every morning. With the help of the laboratory at FotoKem, which is really the only full service laboratory left in the world, we got it done,” concluded Keighley.

Before concluding, the panel highlighted how “Tenet” was possibly the film that will be bringing cinema back to the masses. “It’s a historic moment”, declared von Sychowski, to which Dehmel responded that “2021 is shaping up to be an absolutely mammoth year for moviegoing”, thus shining an even more positive light on the state of the movie industry.

The CJ Cinema Summit episode can be found here.

The post The Return of the Premium Moviegoing Experience: CJCinemaSummit Spotlights “Tenet” and IMAX appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

In fact, there were two large laser projectors at the 2019 SMPTE Technical Conference, which took place from October 21st through October 24th earlier this year; one in each of the two makeshift auditoriums at the downtown Los Angeles Bonaventure Hotel. One of them had the highlight honor of presenting a live image feed from the International Space Shuttle, with a real-time interview with three astronauts Christina Koch, Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan …indeed, Koch and Meir being the very same people who were interviewed live while spacewalking together 350 kilometers above the earth only one week ago…and this time being interviewed in front of the SMPTE audience by NASA Imagery Expert Rodney Grubbs and the ISS Communication Manager Dylan Mathis onstage.

The extra-terrestrial conversation can be watched online at: NASA & AWS Collaborate on Proof-of-Concept Live-From-Space Streaming Workflow. It was the highlight of a spectacular closing day that included explanations about the complications of Space to Earth pictures and data, its storage and presentation, as well as a presentation that delved into the creation/restoration of the Apollo 11 Mission 50th Anniversary movie “Imaging Among the Stars: The Moon, Mars, Deep Space, and Home Again”. All this wrapping up the four day tech conference.

[Before moving on, we can sometimes be glib about the technology we have watched mature, plus, we’ve seen variations and extrapolations so often in the movies. Something so ‘simple’ as clicking on a link to watch breakthrough technology creating a live broadcast from space may seem not worth the effort. In the Q&A section, Tom Scott – who received Oscars for “The Right Stuff” and “Amadeus” and has been on live productions for decades – made this point before asking for some of the details of this evocative piece.]

Book ending from the front of this 2019 Conference was the Hollywood Post Alliance Women in Technology Luncheon presentation of one of the industry’s founding hyphenates. Alice Guy-Blaché was a producer, director and writer, as well as a studio owner, working first in France at the turn of the 20th Century, then in her studio on the east coast of the United States and finally at her studio in Hollywood. Unfortunately, Alice is no longer with us to tell her story. Instead, we got the story from the director, writer and producer Pamala Green (using her own credit cards as well as Kickstarter and big donation campaigns) who wove her presentation from her perspective the documentary “Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché.” Moderator Loren Nielson coordinated and enthusiastically drove the story with questions for the 100+ person group. If you haven’t shown this doc in your cinema, arrange for it now.

In keeping with the stripped-to-its-essence motif of SMPTE, the story of both artistes Alice Guy-Blaché and Pamala Green was like watching the movie “Hugo” (about early film producer-director Georges Méliès) though without the Howard Shore score and 170 million dollar budget. The clips we watched of this early pioneer’s work was no less compelling for anyone who needs to show the early history of cinema, or how the struggle for presenting a female narrative to now classic stories is important. It was amazing to hear the backstory of her attending the first of the Lumière brothers early public showings of the first film projectors – her as the secretary of also legendary engineer-turned-inventor Léon Gaumont (who developed the first film studio in 1895,) and the hundreds upon hundreds of movies that Guy-Blaché made.

You can watch or pick up “Be Natural” at all the usual places, including at this link which helps support Celluloid Junkie.

Striped-to-its-essence is the untold part of a SMPTE Conference. Many – nearly all – of the 70 presentations speak to minute details of an extremely particular nuance of high quality picture and sound; the details dealing with transferring bits in the processing stream, even dealing with digital noise during transfers. This is the case because the conference presentations deal with minute threads of the tapestry that we see and hear during production/post-production/transmission/exhibition, and also because the quick 30 minute presentations are used to describe an associated 20 or 30 page research paper.

For example, François Helt flew over from France with CST R&D Research Chief, Hans-Nikolas Locher, to talk about a paper they have written concerning Uniformity Measurement for French Cinema. As everyone in cinema exhibition are aware, such an elemental act of putting light uniformly on the screen is incredibly sensitive to so many parts of the chain from the light source and actions, through the optics and DLP or LCOS chips and the choice and placement of the lens, choice, placement and cleanliness of the port glass, as well as the quality and upkeep of the air filtering and screen. This presentation delved into a new method for measuring the light during set-up and maintenance checks.

The CST (Commission Supérieure Technique de L’Image et du Son) is a unique organization on the planet, designed to quantify, advise and enforce the rules for design and implementation of cinema auditorium and equipment chain. They are authorized to do this by the group The Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée, more simply called the CNC, an agency of the French Ministry of Culture. Some in the United States would say that their power to control a cinema is an affront to freedom, while from their perspective it is an attempt to prevent fraud – if a facility is licensed to show cinema to the public, then it should follow the rules or not fool the public. They harmonize specifications starting with the international rules set by the ISO, largely set through SMPTE, which is termed a Secretariat for the ISO Technical Committee on Cinematography, similar to many groups we are familiar with such as the IEEE and ANSI and NIST.

The day after their presentation, Helt and Locher also attended the SMPTE 20F Committee meeting which discussed the luminance topic as part of its work to develop a future standard – On-Screen Light Measurement. There they met with (among others) Brian Vessa, the audio mastering Chief at Sony Pictures as well as this years Technical Chair for DCI, and Neil Shaw, an auditorium consultant in architecture who had earlier in the week given a presentation concerning the effect of room design on audio characteristics in an auditorium. That topic is a part of the new SMPTE 25CSS dealing with Cinema B-Chain Characteristics and Expectations.

If your group deals with audio in some way and you have a tech who can contribute, please authorize them to join the SMPTE committee process and spend some time organizing these details.

And that is the way it is with SMPTE. Individuals who volunteer their time, some sponsored by their companies, but all responsible for other tasks to keep their organizations running. It is sometimes hip to natter about how the standards and engineering guidelines take a long time to get done, but not only is there a lot of nuance in developing a standard that can be used worldwide with the equipment of dozens of manufacturers, without stifling progress while aligning the mutually beneficial details that allow for exchange across platforms.

The Conference wasn’t all science geeky. Mr. Vessa also brought three sound design artists onstage for a terrific behind-the-scenes interview. Randy Thom (whose work reaches from “Apocalypse Now” and “The Empire Strikes Back” to “The Revenant” and four movies we’ll see in the next six months), Paula Fairfield (“Game of Thrones” plus a long list of other TV work), and Mark Mangini (“Blade Runner 2049,” “Mad Max: Fury Road” and a long list of movies) exchanged stories about searches for texture and stories of working with different directors and in Fairfield’s case, how working on multi-year projects elicit ideas that don’t manifest for many seasons but perhaps need to be gradiently accommodated for.

Going back to the projection of the astronauts, this year’s presentation was a new proof-of-concept workflow expanding “…on the workflow NASA and AWS co-produced in 2017 to enable the first-ever live 4K UHD stream from space, moving even more of it into the cloud including the first use of cloud resources for data storage and video origination for streaming from space. Due to the impact of space radiation on the camera used to source the 4K signal from the ISS for the 2017 live event, [this test] used an HD camera on Station to source the live signal. The in-house AV team during SMPTE 2019 ran HDMI to the projector. AWS Elemental Live encoded the mezzanine contribution to LA, and encoded the produced show which was made available as a live stream.”

Which brings up tangential feature of conferences – there is a lot of information that does not come from an exhibition booth or tech presentation. As so often happens, one runs into someone and, after the politeness pleasantries, one finds out that the other person has been involved in a project that could change everything. Because (as the author carefully points out so as not to seem to be spoiling the water in the pool) non-cinema presentations – Alternative Content and Live Event Cinema – are typically sent by cable or satellite and presented onscreen as digital broadcast quality through an HDMI cable in the 709 color space instead of the cinema quality P3…and the stream is often interlaced 1080p expanded to the cinema minimum standard of progressive 2K. For 12 points and a beer with the editors, explain in a few words why that is non-optimal in the comments below.

Ron Williams, CEO of Landmark Color, detailed how YouTube supported access to nine sets of ARRI Cinematic Multicam equipment and the talents of nine directors of photography, plus a container of equipment next to one of the stages at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival and a feed to YouTube. The result was a live streaming feed with the quality that we see on our iPad …and coincidently, what is seen on a cinema screen…that looks like a cinematic music video instead of a football match on the TV. (Unfortunately, at the time, YouTube only had 1080P, but now the streaming video giant has expanded to 4K capabilities.)

Imagine getting quality like this into the cinema. …on a screen that was properly set up as described in the standards.

In addition to the television and post-centric equipment, many of the booths at the conference dealt with quality assurance and control, notably some of the work at NHK for the 8K images that will flow for the Olympics in 2020, and Stanford Research’s Sarnoff division’s amazing patterns.

Which is the real difference between a SMPTE Tech Conference and the wonderful experiences at CinemaCon and CineEurope where today and near-today products are shown to the industry. From the Early Career Track discussions with Steve Wozniak to the Movielabs Conference Keynote giving a 10 years’ out view to the live test audio and picture presentations preparing for use on walks on earth’s moon in 2023, SMPTE in general and SMPTE Tech Conference 2019 was a package delivered for the future.

Good luck to us all.

The post SMPTE 2019 Tech Conference Was Out of This World appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

Celluloid Junkie was launched at a time when the digital cinema conversion, though underway, was struggling to gain traction.  We were still two years off from “Avatar” which gave cinemas a digital and 3D adrenaline boost. We knew that everything would soon be digital, so rather than a name like Digital Cinema Digest we opted for something tongue-in-cheek and memorable-ish. Besides, most of the obvious domain names had already been taken.

Our first two posts proved prescient in hindsight in terms of topics chosen. Sperling wrote about the trailer for the first “Iron Man” film playing during “The Daily Show”. A decade later the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has become the biggest force in today’s multiplex business. The same day Patrick wrote about the appointment of Phil Clapp to head the UK Cinema Association. (Since he is still around, we suppose it is only fair to wish him a happy anniversary too.) Mr. Clapp went on to become President of UNIC as well and has played a major role in shaping the cinema industries in the United Kindom and European Union.

While one of Celluloid Junkie’s co-founders went off to work for The Hollywood Reporter (you are missed, Carolyn Giardina) and Patrick got sidetracked helping to digitize Bollywood for Adlabs/Reliance, Sperling kept the site alive for most of the first few years. When the time came to re-launch the site it proved a major effort. We didn’t just need a new logo and look (goodbye popcorn box, hello ticket stub), but sites now had to be optimised for smartphones.  To put this in perspective, we we weren’t being indexed by Google to show up in searches at this point. We managed our redesign and relaunch by bootstrapping, because we knew what we wanted, even if it would take longer for us to finance it ourselves. (Special shout-out here to Ben Lew, our web wizard and graphics designer).

While we are not quite finished with the site, and indeed may never be, we are proud of what it has become: a resource for the global cinema industry. Not satisfied with just being a “blog” we launched a press releases section CJ Wire over a year ago. We were tired of doing stories that were just re-writes of press releases.  Besides, why not read the original for yourself, instead of seeing how we chop and re-arrange the quotes? If there is something we can provide additional analysis to then we do, but we don’t believe in “churnalism“. To-date we have had over 500 press releases posted to CJ Wire and it is the second or third most visited section of CJ in any month, with 80% of visitors sticking around to read more than one post.

We are privileged to have been joined this year by Jim Amos, whose box office analysis and accurate predictions get each week off to a roaring start. We have also had countless contributions from the likes of Charles ‘CJ’ Flynn and too many other people for us to thank them all here. Above all, we learn by talking to smart people in the cinema industry who give us their time and insights for us to share. We will be growing the editorial team further in the coming months and years to expand our coverage. There is so much more for us to do in cinema retail, seating, social media, distribution, market, etc.

We are also grateful to our first two industry partners Vista Cinema and the Coca-Cola Company. We held off accepting advertising and sponsorships for years, even when companies came knocking on our door, because we felt the site wasn’t ready. Having launched the Cinema of the Month and Retail Insights sections with the support of Vista and Coke, we will be announcing more partnerships in the future that allow us to broaden our coverage. We want to keep CJ free instead of putting up a pay-wall and commercial partnerships with such blue chip companies are what enable us to fund the continued growth of the site and the coverage it provides.

We are constantly looking to launch new features and regular columns, everything from the Top Women in Global Cinema (one of our most shared posts ever) and cutting edge news and analysis on topical issues such as MoviePass or the Samsung Cinema LED, to weekly and monthly posts such as the Cinema News Digest and CJ Interviews. We are constantly evolving and trying to improve.  As an example, we recently broke out the Cinema Property Update into separate features, dividing them into different monthly geographies.

What began as a side project cooked up at informal meetings during Showest and Cinema Expo in 2007 as a way to share knowledge and information with colleagues, has expanded over the course of ten years both in terms of Celluloid Junkie’s scope and reach.  Initially the only people who visited CJ were the handful of co-workers we told about it.  Word quickly spread through professional circles and pretty soon we had readers from all over the world working in diverse areas of the industry.

The few hundred visitors that stopped by CJ in the first month or two after we launched in 2007 has grown into tens of thousands depending on the month.  CJ is now visited each year by professionals from 153 countries.  And readers are sharing our posts on a more frequent basis, educating others within the industry about the information they are finding on CJ.  This has required us to devote more time and resources to simply maintaining the site with additional technology infrastructure.  Not that we’re complaining.  We had always wanted to learn how to properly “spin up” a load balancing web server anyway.  (Thankfully, that now happens automatically on heavier traffic days.)

There’s been so much happening in the last ten years that it is almost impossible to summarise. We saw the rise and slump and rise again of China; we saw AMC become the world’s largest cinema chain; we saw the tragic shooting in a cinema in Aurora; we have written about innovations such as immersive audio, HDR, laser projection, motion seats and more; we now expect to be able to order a glass of wine and hot meals in the cinema; and we keep seeing the most talented of artists believing that the big screen is the best place for their stories, whether they are Christopher Nolan, Kathryn Bigelow, Bong Joon-ho or the Russo brothers.

We feel that this is the best possible time to be working in the theatrical distribution and cinema industries. This is not to say that they do not face challenges, but that the innovation that has sustained it as a way to be entertained in groups for over a century will keep it alive for a long time to come. We look forward to reflecting, analysing and evolving alongside and as part of the industry, hopefully for many more decades.

All of this has been possible because people like you visit our site, read our posts, share them, discuss them and use them in your daily business. So we want to thank you for your support over the years and look forward to many more. Do please drop us a line, talk to us at one of the many events we attend or let us know your thoughts about CJ. After all, this is your site too.

The post Ten Years of Celluloid Junkie appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

And if that obstacle weren’t enough, Weinstein also cast real Hasidim rather than actors, many of whom had never seen a movie before, let alone been inside a cinema. As well, he chose to shoot “Menashe” entirely in Yiddish, a Germanic-based language spoken by the Ashkenazi Jews of Central Europe which dates back to the 9th century, and one Weinstein is not at all fluent in. Indeed, “Menashe” is the first film in almost 70 years to be filmed entirely in Yiddish.

Foregoing Yiddish would have been practical for a multitude of reasons, but not for a documentarian such as Weinstein. “This film lives or dies by its authenticity,” he said during a recent interview to promote the film’s release in North American cinemas.

This authenticity included loosely basing the story of the movie on the real life events of Menashe Lustig, whom Weinstein cast in the title role. The narrative focuses on Menashe, a grocery store clerk who wishes to maintain custody of his son Rieven after the death of his wife. Because Hasidic tradition mandates that every home with a child must have a mother, Menashe must remarry in order to reunite with his son. Without a new wife, Reiven must be adopted by his tradition-bound uncle. However, in the week leading up to his wife’s memorial service, Menashe’s Rabbi allows his son to live with him in an attempt to remove any doubt Menashe can be a good father.

Weinstein elevates what could easily have been a touching father and son bonding story and enhances it by layering in elements that take us inside New York’s Hasidic neighborhoods. This is a community that, though right in the middle of New York City, is rarely visited by non-Hasidic. In fact, finding locations in Borough Park and Crown Heights proved difficult because residents feared publicity that might be generated by a film production. To Hasidim, publicity goes against the traditional practice of modesty.

For this same reason, casting Hasidim was a challenge. While many people might clamor to appear in a movie, that is not the case for Hasidic Jews. At times Weinstein and his producer, Alex Lipschultz, would cast a role, only to have the performer drop out after being pressured by their synagogue, family or others within the community. Weinstein and Lipschultz were constantly anxious that those cast in “Menashe” remain committed throughout the production of the film.

Casting Hasidim however, meant that Weinstein would be able to shoot his film with natural Yiddish speakers, even if he didn’t understand what they were saying. In order for Weinstein to direct each scene, it would first be rehearsed with the actors in English. This allowed for blocking and performances to be worked out in a manner everyone could understand.

This included Yiddish translators that were constantly on set. “The translotors were the final roadblock to make sure things were correct,” said Weinstein. “Then when we switched to Yiddish, my Yiddish was basic enough that I knew approximately what was happening.”

Also helping refine performances and make sure they didn’t stray too far from Weinstein’s intent were the translators and Lipschultz, who not only produced “Menashe”, but co-wrote the screenplay. What allowed the filmmakers to work in this manner was a simplified technique they came up with to shoot and edit the film in Yiddish.

“It was kind of like the United Nations where we had on set, at all times, a live translator who was speaking into a microphone and was live translating everything that was being said, that was married to the video,” Weinstein explained. “So you could always turn on channel five when you were editing and you could hear exactly, word-by-word translation of what was being said. I’m not saying it was quick, because I think everything took us four to five times longer working in Yiddish, but that was the sacrifice we wanted to make for authenticity.”

As “Menashe” was being edited, Weinstein and his team would have Yiddish translators and scholars watch each cut to ensure every edit made sense. “We constantly had translators working with us throughout the entire process,” said Weisntein. “And then once we locked it we had many different Yiddish experts both inside the community and outside the community go through it and make sure we were getting it right.”

Part of the complication of working in Yiddish, especially when it came to creating subtitles, is that it is such a varied language. Much like the variations of Portuguese between Portugal and Brazil, Yiddish has countless versions that can differ immensely between neighborhoods, communities and countries. There can be a dozen different ways to say a single English word in Yiddish.

“Doing the subtitles for this film was so time consuming and exhausting. I probably wasted a month of my life or more just on subtitling this movie,” Weinstein confessed. “Yiddish is a language where there are so many different interpretations of it. I was always more interested in translating literally versus translating figuratively. If someone means ‘get lost’ but really the expression is ‘breaking a tea kettle,’ I want breaking a tea kettle and not get lost even though you’re figuratively saying get lost.”

But wouldn’t audiences get confused if they could understand the words being said in Yiddish, but not their ultimate meaning? “That’s why we had lots of debates about this,” Weinstein answered when asked directly. “The question was, who is our audience? I think our audience is really intelligent people who want to learn something new about society. Part of that is the language. We learn about society through what they say. Metaphors that societies use teach us a lot. It was always a big debate about how much do we let things stay not understood.”

Weinstein overcame the language barrier so adeptly in “Menashe” that the film was selected to premiere in the Next section at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival in January where it promptly won critical praise. One month later, the movie received a similar welcome at the Berlinale. A24 promptly came calling and picked up the rights for the film in the United States and China, making “Menashe” the upstart distributor’s first foreign language feature.

A24 is now opening the film theatrically in the United States starting July 28, 2017. Weinstein also reports rights to “Menashe” quickly sold in almost every territory around the world, giving the film a great opportunity to garner a large audience in cinemas.

One group that is unlikely to see “Menashe” in movie theatres is Hasidic Jews whose community is so vividly and respectfully depicted in the film. “They’re going to see it, they’re just going to bootleg it,” said Weinstein. “They are happy to pay for it. It’s just that most Hasidic people would not pay to go to see this movie in a theatre because it breaks a lot of the modesty codes that they have.”

The post Translating “Menashe” Into A Yiddish Success Story appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

Made up of 17,000 islands Indonesia has a population of 260 million people speaking over 300 native languages. It is the fourth most populous country in the world, behind China, India and the United States. Even with so many potential moviegoers, Indonesia only had only 1,117 commercial movie screens at the start of 2016, giving it a per capita screen count of 0.2. To put that in perspective, South Korea, with a population one-fifth the size of Indonesia, has 2,400 cinema screens.

The reason Indonesia has become one of the world’s most under-screened territories dates back to the three decades, beginning in 1967, in which the country was under the autocratic rule of Suharto and his New Order regime. It was during this time, in 1986, that Cineplex 21 Group was founded by Suharto’s half-brother, Sudwikatmono, seizing control of the film industry by monopolizing both the import of films and the country’s cinema chains. Suharto’s government protected the company from competition by adopting a Negative Investment List (NIL) which outlawed foreign investment in a wide range of economic sectors such as tourism, grocery stores, wholesale distribution and, specifically, the operation of cinemas.

This allowed Cineplex 21 to become the only entity with rights to import and distribute every movie in the country, including those from the six Hollywood studios. Likewise, their Cinema 21 subsidiary grew to operate 90% of Indonesia’s movie theatres; a percentage now down to 74% with 843 screens accounting for USD $180 million in tickets sales during 2015. Though the NIL was revised numerous times, none of the creative industries were ever removed.

That was until February of 2016 when Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, overhauled the NIL in an effort to open South East Asia’s largest economy to foreign investment. Suddenly, foreign companies could own 100% of businesses operating in the country’s film industry, including production, distribution and exhibition. Just one year later, Tomas Jegeus, President of FIP, is making a move to capitalize on Indonesia’s new openness by entering into an agreement with Jakarta-based Lifelike Pictures to co-produce a local language title, the action film “212 Warrior”.

“Everybody has been looking at China as the big growth market, but Indonesia quietly has been growing,” said Jegeus when asked about his interest in the country. “From 2014 to 2015, it grew some astonishing number like 35-38% in terms of admissions from one year to another. And that’s with a very limited amount of theatres.”

Michael J. Werner, the former chairman of Fortissimo Films and executive producer of “212 Warrior”, first made Jegeus aware of the project by introducing him to Lifelike Pictures. “They’re a new but very ambitious production company and they came to me and had this amazing pitch for a movie of ‘212 Warrior’,” he recalled. “It was a phenomenal presentation with their idea about the characters and who would play them, the different roles and the look and feel and aesthetic of the movie and what they wanted to do. They wanted to push the boundaries of what Indonesian filmmaking could be.”

“212 Warrior” is based on a character named Wiro Sableng which translates literally to “crazy warrior”. He is the creation of the late author Bastian Tito who included the character in 185 books written between 1967 and 2006. Wiro Sableng is very popular in Indonesia, known for being a fierce fighter with a wacky sense of humor. The actor cast to play the character is someone quite familiar with the hero, Vino G. Bastian, Tito’s son. Angga Dwimas Sasongko, whose last film was the critically acclaimed “Surat dari Praha” (“Letters from Prague”), will direct the film and Sheila Timothy of Lifelike Pictures will produce.

Another crew member, one of the more important when it comes to action films featuring any form of martial arts, is that of the action choreographer who must turn every physical altercation into a ballet of fists, legs and weaponry. Filling this role on “212 Warrior” will be Yayan Ruhiyan, the famed choreographer responsible for the worldwide hit Indonesian action film “The Raid” in 2011.

When FIP takes on a local language production, Jegeus explains that it’s not about trying to bring Hollywood to the local market. “There’s no point in that. I don’t want to come in and sort of tell them how to tell the story because man, even if I moved to Indonesia now and lived there for another 50 years I will never have the cultural context,” he said. “We’re going through the fifth draft of the script and obviously we’re giving some input, more from a western storytelling perspective, because if there’s one thing that Hollywood does have right in the system out here is the power of development.”

Jegeus also believes that FIP can lend a hand with various post-production elements on “212 Warrior” such as enhanced visual effects to make the movie, “look bigger and more ambitious than other Indonesian films have looked like before.”

The movie will begin shooting this summer in Indonesia and is scheduled for release in 2018. By then there will be more cinemas throughout the country for “212 Warrior” to open in. Right now some 35% of screens are in Jakarta, Indonesia’s enormous capital city, and 87% are on the island of Java. However competition is beginning to emerge for Cinema 21.

Already CGV Blitz, a subsidiary of South Korea’s CGV Cinemas, operates 139 screens in 19 locations throughout Indonesia, with hopes to increase that to number 600 by 2020. Meanwhile, Cinemaxx, founded by the Indonesian real estate development firm Lippo Group, has become the country’s fastest growing chain with 102 screens in 14 cities. The company has plans to open 2,000 screens in 85 cities over the next ten years.

Because “212 Warrior” will be considered an Indonesian film, Fox and Lifelike won’t have to worry about a quota which began in 2009 mandating domestic productions make up 60% of all screen time in cinemas. Granted, the quota has never actually been enforced, probably due to the fact that only 115 local movies were released in 2015, the most recent year for which there are figures.

Beyond Indonesia, Fox is taking a wait-and-see approach to its distribution strategy. “I would hope that we can at least open it within the near region, like Singapore, Malaysia, maybe up to Hong Kong,” said Jegeus. “But those things you don’t know until the film is finished and you see the quality of it. That’s when you see how wide you can take it outside. But I would hope, if we get the action right, and if we get the story right… I mean, man, we worked hard on this script to get this right to where it is now and it’s not done yet, but I think it’s going to be a really f—ing cool story.”

The post Fox International Productions Ventures Into Emerging Indonesian Movie Market appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

The Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), explained in the most simple terms, is “the industry standard for managing color throughout the life cycle of a motion picture or television production.” So why should that matter? Because making movies and television shows is getting more complicated with the involvement of different digital cameras, post-production facilities around the world, visual effects shot of ever-greater complexity and a plethora of devices to watch it on, from your smartphone, through your OLED TV set all the way through to the Imax screen.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX5tQix9NbY[/youtube]

ACES means that if the “Wizard of Oz” was shot today, Dorothy’s ruby shoes would always have the exact same colour as the director and cinematographer captured on set and tweaked in color grading. With the danger of proprietary standards from manufacturers coming to dominate how film and shows were produced, AMPAS (or the Academy) stepped in not just to “ensures a consistent color experience that preserves the filmmaker’s creative vision,” but also to enable restoration and preservation of films that will look in decades how they were first seen by audiences last century. So that Dorothy’s ruby shoes will always look the same.

So while it is hard to get a typical film professional excited about ACES, never mind audiences, it is something that is important for us all. Fortunately ACES is getting major buy-in from creatives, vendors and service providers, as well as time and attention at international gatherings such as NAB and IBC. It was at NAB that we got an update on ACES 1.0, as well as some major breaking news from Universal, who are going all-in for ACES as the first Hollywood studio to do so.

Andy Maltz, Managing Director of AMPAS’ Science and Technology Council (SciTech Council), began by giving an overview of ACES and where adoption was at with regards to ACES 1.0, which was launched at NAB last year. It consists of 17 specifications and tools, as well as a high dynamic range (HDR) ‘starter pack’, including ST 2084 Display Transform. There was also an announcement about the ACES Logo program and education and training initiatives.

Since then 25 companies have signed up for the ACES logo program and all deployed ACES 1.0 components. Interestingly ACES is being used in places the Academy was not even aware of or had promoted it, such as last year’s South Indian monster hit “Bahubali” that employed an ACES workflow, having done their homework on how to utilise it completely on their own. You can find a partial list of ACES films on IMDB.

Not just film but television productions such as “Deliverance Creek” also employ ACES. Special effects facilities like ILM have used it for films like “The Martian”, “Captain America: Civil War”, “Rogue One” and “Star Wars VIII”. On the gaming side it was employed in Epic’s Unreal Engine v4.8, for graphics in Nvidia GPU drivers and even in academia in coursework at Bayler and RIT.

ACES has not only been a success in its first year but also required very few tweaks, with ACES 1.0.1 patch fixing typos and small bugs. The next version will be adding support for certain colonist styles and new “working space.” AMPAS has also launched a series of ACES Now! training videos.

For the ACES Archiving Standard, the Academy is doing its part to solve the Digital Dilemma. For archiving purposes the idea is to use existing standards wherever possible, such as wrap ACES2065-4 images in MXF. All six Hollywood studios (whose films need preserving), as well as Dolby and other vendors have agreed. And next we heard from one of those studios.

Wade Hanniball, SVP, D-Cinema Operations & Technology at Universal Pictures, opened his presentation by stating that “our hope is that ACES will be universally adopted, and that way Universal will adopt ACES.” He then went on to outline Universal’s aspirations and inspirations for ACES.

Hanniball saw ACES as a “response to rappid rise of new technology that affect motion pictures. New tools result in surge in new formats. These make timely mastering difficult with added expense; puts added expense on shrinking timelines.” He went on to state that “our studio is partial to open and no-proprietary standards.”

Universal’s view is that “the ACES toolkit is well defined and robust.” He also emphasised the need to have the ability to apply ACES to their 35mm restoration efforts. “Archival format has to be long lasting and flexible enough to adapt to new formats,” Hanniball noted. “No point re-inventing it in 20 years time.”

For Universal ACES would come into play first “for back catalogue restoration titles and then progress to new releases. That will require outreach and planning.” But, Hanniball emphasised, “We think ACES is worth the effort and it is the future of moption picture imagery.”

This is why Universal has committed to have switched over completely to ACES by the first quarter of 2018. It is the first Hollywood studio to have given an outright commitment to ACES and a firm date. “The ACES Space is the Place,” Hanniball concluded.

The third and last speaker was Chris Clark, Production Engineer, Original Content for Netflix, which he pointed out is both a streaming operation and a studio these days. Netflix is producing 600 hours of original content in 2016, which includes feature films, TV series, documentaries and comedy specials. Hundreds of different facilities are used for post-production. “We are a nimble company. We rely on our partners,” he said.

But with such a global operation you need consistency. “Color does not need to change from facility to facility,” Clark stated. “Math does not need to change. We accomplish this by setting standards in the industry. Focus on display standards. That used to be the projector.”  ACES for Netflix is the new negative. “What you see is ALL you get” or ‘WYSIAYG’, as Clark was almost able to pronounce.

ACES is used on Netflix’s shows and it’s first films, such as “Ridiculous 6.” Clark joked that while the film was not recognized by Academy, to laughs from the audience, it was shot by Deam Semler, who won an Oscar for “Dances With Wolves”. The film used ACES, shot 4K RAW and also output in Dolby Vision. “Why we like ACES: Open source, Cross Platform, Future Proof. Archive the Negative, not just the Print,” Clark concluded.

AMPAS might not have completely solved the Digital Dilemma with ACES, but it has gone a long way to address the issue, as well as given creatives, vendors, service providers and post-houses the best possible set of tools for preserving the artistic integrity and vision for every type of moving image. This is why you should know about ACES.

The post CJ @ NAB: Universal First Studio to Embrace ACES Fully appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

I became fascinated by the story when I first came across an obscure documentary in our film collection. Klubb Super 8 is a Swedish film archive and distribution label that specialises in cult classics that the critics would rather forget. The films ranged from sci-fi, horror, viking comedies, thrillers, sex education to lots of ‘nudie cuties’ films from the 1960s. Remember the film that Travis Bickle thought would be a good date movie in “Taxi Driver”? That’s the kind of film that I and my colleague Rickard, who founded the company, re-issued on VHS and DVD. Amongst this diverse back catalogue was an hour-long Japanese documentary from 1970 called “King Porno” about Berth Milton Sr.

We suspect that Milton Sr. commissioned and paid for the documentary himself, because it is a fascinating example of self aggrandisement about a man clearly obsessed with the trappings of wealth and glamour that the proceeds from his glossy sex magazines afforded him. There he is posing with gorgeous women in front of his two-tone Rolls Royce Shadow (called ‘Lady Fuck’), one of the very few of its kind in socialist Sweden at a time when everyone else was driving Volvos. But Milton Sr. wasn’t like other Swedes, because he had a vision of a global empire of jet-set sex, which the Japanese crew was there to document. Out of shot of the camera was a teenage boy, who would grow up to become the man that actually made that vision come true: his son Berth Milton Jr, or just Junior.

Act I – Founding an Empire

Before he owned a Rolls, Berth Milton Senior got his start selling Volkswagen cars, proving such a good salesman that he was pulling in more money than the director of the company he worked for. He was a natural when it came to business, seeing himself as an American-style self-made man and standing out in the conformist and leftist Sweden. But the one thing he shared with his fellow Swedes was an uninhibited attitude towards sex; only to him the era of ‘free love’ was a golden opportunity to cash in.

Senior had always had a keen interest in amateur photography and filmmaking. He was given his first still camera at the age of six. By the time he was nine he was already able to talk much older girls in his neighbourhood into disrobing for his lens. As well as a businessman he was a craftsman with an equally good eye for beautiful women as for good picture composition. But Senior was also lucky with his timing. Sweden had been known for its liberal attitude to nudity ever since Arne Matson’s “One Summer of Happiness” (“Hon Dansade en Sommar” – also available on DVD from Klubb Super 8) won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1951. This was back when the festival audience got to vote for the winning film and clearly liked the sight of Ulla Jacobsson naked bosom. In the 1960s the limit of what could be shown in print and on screen in terms of nudity and sex was being pushed by smaller magazines and film producers in Denmark and Sweden.

Milton Sr. however was not impressed by the cheap black and white photos and booklets being distributed in Scandinavia, but aspired to the kind of glossy glamour of Playboy and Penthouse. His publication Private would be colour from the start and feature nothing but the most stunning women willing to get naked and have sex on camera in the most beautiful locations. Dingy basements that others used for photo shoots would instead be the nascent global headquarter of his empire, situated in Stockholm’s Gamla Stan (Old Town) where he did everything from processing, layout and distribution. In the era before credit cards or PayPal, money would arrive by post in different currencies from all over Europe to pay for the discreet mailing of his magazine.

In a corner of the office was a shy and gangly teenager, who could be mistaken for an intern, if such a job had been considered appropriate for a boy that young. Not only did he help on the business side of stuffing magazines into envelopes, opening envelopes with cash and counting them (different piles for Deutsche Marks, French Francs, Italian Lira and English Pounds), but he also helped out with the naked photos shoots, carrying equipment and wiping up after the ‘climax’ of the scenes. To the girls, he became something of a mascot that brought out their motherly instinct when their bosoms weren’t heaving for the camera. He never complained because doing the job meant that he could be close to his father, whom he worshiped.

Milton Junior was the result of the Senior’s first marriage in his pre-porn days. Senior’s own dad had operated a traveling amusement park: Miltons Tivoli, which is perhaps how Senior got his inspiration for a glitzy and movable entertainment facade underpinned by distinctly unglamorous work. Senior married but had neither the time nor patience for married life, leaving his wife, son and Junior’s four-year older sister in the north of Sweden to work in Stockholm. Junior’s mother had to look for work herself, so Junior and his sister were raised by friends of the family.

During the summers Junior was allowed to go down to Stockholm and stay with his dad in a tiny one-bed apartment. This was the highlight of the year for him, despite the awkwardness of this father-son time together. Dad would often bring back women/models and have sex with them while Junior was awake on a mattress in the kitchen, hearing everything through the thin walls. Other nights dad would give him money to go to the cinema or amusement park and then ‘forget’ to let his son in when he returned late at night, ringing and knocking on the door in vain. For his 11th birthday dad would give him a photo album inscribed “To Berth on his 11th Birthday”, that his son would treasure for years. It was one of the few concrete tokens of dad’s fleeting affection. It made a rare change from being told off for stumbling onto his dad having sex with yet another new pretty lady.

It was the same year that Senior opened his em-porn-ium Sexy Shop on Stockholm’s main commercial thoroughfare Drottninggatan. Junior went to work there distributing flyers (“Stick them on the windshields of foreign registration cars,” his dad instructed him), packing magazines, running the super 8 projector showing sex films. He was paid a pittance but he worked twice as hard as everyone else to prove his worth to his dad. By the end of the summer he was always sent back up north to home, thinner and more tired than when he arrived.

Act II – The Emperor of Naked

As Junior grew up, so too did Senior outgrow Sweden. He saw himself as a pioneer who kept battling against the establishment, whether this was the Ministry of Justice trying to censor his work or the taxman snooping into his financial affairs. He had started simple enough in 1965 with his own secretary on the cover of the first issue of Private magazine. But five years later, Senior was ready for the world. It wasn’t just the Japanese documentary crew that was there to record his step onto a bigger international stage. German men’s magazine Daily Girl was there to do a major story on Senior, who was by then remarried and had just seen the birth of twin girls. But the new family was just an accessory to the photo shoot accompanying the story of the self-made King of Porno, posing on a yacht in the Stockholm archipelago (borrowed from a race car driver that Private was sponsoring) or next to the private jet in Stockholm’s Bromma airport (belonging to a legitimate business from the Wallenberg family). The Porn Emperor of Naked wasn’t naked himself – he just borrowed the trappings of an emperor.

“A whiff of good living: Jet and luxury yacht are part of the image which Berth Milton polishes with the same zeal as his photography,” was how the magazine headlined it. By this stage Private was being distributed to 26 countries, though Senior did not want to get drawn on specific details such as circulation or revenue. He wanted to project the image of a millionaire and a family father at that, one who was very happy and satisfied with his new family and was leaving the personal hedonism behind. Left behind was also his daughter and son from his first marriage. Senior had his sights on bigger markets: beyond Europe lay the US.

The whole time Senior maintained an iron grip on the Private business to ensure that the highest quality was maintained. He didn’t just hand pick the models and photograph them himself, but also what they would be wearing (at least in the first few photos), the locations, the cars and the props. After that, Senior would be equally determined to do the best layout on the glossiest printed paper available, even buying the printing presses to control the whole process. He faced competition from Denmark (Color Climax were his porn nemesis) and having tested the water shooting a glossy porn film, only to see it pirated within weeks, he doubled down on printed smut. When shooting scenes in Sweden became too repetitive, he started taking his shoots all over Europe. This wasn’t just sex – this was jet-set sex.

When the deal to expand into the US proved an empire building too far, he instead turned his attention to Spain. In the late Franco era Barcelona appealed with its sunny climate and cheap life, much like Los Angeles had for filmmakers of both the Hollywood and Chatsworth (adult film) variety. Here he would take his family far away from the Swedish disapproval of commercialised sex and the taxman’s poking around.

Act III – The Prince to the Rescue

With Berth Junior left behind by his dad, he turned his back on porn and the hope of winning the affection of his father. Junior settled down in Stockholm and decided that he was going to build the kind of stable family life for himself that he never enjoyed with his parents. He had inherited his father’s knack for business, despite only having graduated from the business school of porn life. But instead of exporting glossy magazines of women in lingerie, he made his money importing pantyhose and watches.

Junior then started building up his own fortune running everything from gyms, spas, chiropractors, massage parlours (strictly no hanky panky ones) and salad bars to tanning salons. It was the happy era of ABBA and SAAB, with Junior finding a wife and welcoming his first child. Becoming a father himself he had a chance to right things for the next generation of Miltons. The now grown-up skinny and shy kid from the north, who was bullied over his Finnish-Swedish accent, was becoming not just a family man but a proto-Yuppie. Instead of a Rolls, his one concession to a glamorous life was his Harley Davidson bike.

While Junior was prepared to forget Senior, the Swedish taxman was neither ready to forget nor forgive the sums that it was felt were owed to the Swedish state. This was the same decade that Ingmar Bergman had to go into exile after being frogmarched away from a rehearsal of his play at the Royal Dramatic Theatre over owed taxes. Sweden’s most famous author Astrid Lindgren wrote a fairy tale that was a thinly veiled attack on the rapacious taxman, for whom 100% tax rate was not enough. If Sweden’s most famous film director and book author didn’t stand a chance against the powers of the tax authorities, there was even less hope for the country’s most infamous pornographer.

The 80s is when the gloss of popular culture caught up with the gloss of Senior’s sex vision, with semi naked women gracing TV screens 24 hours a day as MTV pumped out the soundtracks of the decade. Sadly the 80s were the swan song for Senior’s reign as King of Porn with even Spain not far enough away to escape the Swedish authorities. With no tax declaration for the years 1984 to 1987, there was no option for Senior but to seek bankruptcy protection. The notes from the doctor and insurance provider paint a picture of a broken man, whose years of flying around the world had left him in a poor physical state with both health and mental problems. The 100th issue of Private was to be his last one. There was only one person he could now turn to.

“Take everything, as long as you take care of me,” were the words with which Senior handed over the proverbial keys to his broken porn empire to Junior. He didn’t just hand over the Private business group but even his personal possessions, including his much loved Rolls-Royce. Junior had turned his back on porn and had no desire to return to the world of smut. Junior had proven himself a capable businessman who could stand on his own two feet and, besides, he had his own family to think of.

But even at the age of 35, he could still not shake the deep rooted desire to win his father’s love and affection. So whatever reservations he harboured, he put them aside, not just to save his father but also to save the empire that he had left so long ago and seen fall into neglect. Junior wasn’t just a dutiful son, but he was also by this stage a sharp businessman who recognised a valuable brand that had lost its lustre. He wouldn’t just win his dad’s affection but he would also make an even greater success of Private.

Junior paid off dad’s debts in Sweden and in Spain. He installed his father, with his new young stepmother and newborn stepbrother in an apartment in Stockholm. Junior set about cleaning up the business with a vengeance and getting the publication back on track. Having dabbled in real estate in both Sweden and Spain, it was easy for him to move easily between the two geographical poles of the business, perhaps not realising that he was leaving his wife and children behind in Stockholm whenever he went to Barcelona, much like his father had left him in the north of Sweden to build the porn empire for in Stockholm the first time around. But this time would be different.

The 1980s were giving way to the 90s. There were not just porn films but on the horizon there were also exciting new technologies like pay-per-view and CD-Roms. There would be Private Film, Private Gold, Private Clothing boutiques, Pirate Magazine and Private Black Label. He had a vision of becoming the first adult entertainment company listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. The fall of the Berlin Wall had opened the path to a land of beautiful women who would have sex on camera cheaper than any Swedish, German or Dutch models. The Private 2.0 empire would be bigger, better, sexier and more successful than anything his dad could ever have dreamt of.

Act IV – The King v the Prince

As he sat in a Stockholm fast food restaurant, waiting for the meeting with the person very likely sent to kill him, while the police were hiding in unmarked cars outside, Junior must have reflected on where exactly things had gone wrong with Senior. All he had wanted was to rescue and make a success of Private, the label his dad had created as his life’s work, so that he could finally win dad’s respect. The problem was that Junior had made too much of a success of Private 2.0 and the old king was resentful and felt cheated out of the new riches.

Never mind that Senior with his iron grip on the company had managed to run it into the ground as it ran into problems with tax authorities across Europe. Never mind that he handed over a soiled brand laden with debt to his son. Forget that his son had taken care of him and his step mother and step siblings so that dad could enjoy a comfortable retirement back home in his native country. All that Senior could see was that Junior was sitting on the Private throne with all the riches and glamour that he himself had always coveted. If Junior wasn’t going to hand Private back to him willingly, he knew people who might make him. And if Senior couldn’t have it back, he might instead ensure that his son wouldn’t live to enjoy it.

It’s perhaps not surprising that there is a lot of overlap between the porn world and the criminal underworld. In the smut business there are things that need doing for which the Yellow Pages phone directory doesn’t have a category or listings for that particular profession. In Swedish these violent men are simply known as a ‘torpedo’, perhaps because they move silently and undetected until their mission is carried out to gruesome completion. In English parlance they would simply be known as ‘fixers’. And Milton Senior was still acquainted with plenty of fixers.

Sweden might be known as a liberal and happy country, but it is also the country where the Prime Minister was gunned down on a Stockholm street and the murderer is still not known to this day. It is a country where motorcycle gangs were the organised crime power of the 1980s and 1990s, controlling everything from drugs to prostitution. If you were in the flesh trade then the Stockholm night clubs like Chat Noir is where the worlds of porn and prostitution overlapped. One was only marginally more legitimate than the other and Milton Senior had always made sure to have friends in both camps.

When threatening Junior directly himself didn’t produce any results, Senior decided that it was time to send him a ‘message’. At first it was nothing more than an explosion at Junior’s house in the wealthy Stockholm suburbs. Nobody was injured, but it was enough to make Junior fear for his immediate family’s life and to send them away. He knew just how brutally ruthless his father could be, and how even as a broken old man he could still exert control. Everything that Junior had rebuilt from scratch was at stake.

Private was more successful than it ever had been or indeed, ever would be. The listing of the company on the NASDAQ stock exchange – after a lengthy road tour to investors persuading them that porn was going legit – was just the crowning achievement. The magazine had spawned several sister titles, TV channels, VHS and then DVD, hotel pay-per-view, dating services, distribution deals and partnerships with leading porn producers like Marc Dorcel in France. Next up was the brave new world of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Meanwhile the productions were getting more sophisticated and big budget: historic porn dramas, Hollywood take-offs like Private Gladiator, the two-part “Millionaire” series that reportedly cost close to two million US dollars, more than the budget of a typical European non-porn feature film. Junior was himself a millionaire, listed in 2001 as the 29th richest individual in Sweden, amongst the owners of such other notable global Swedish brands as IKEA, ABB and Ericsson. He celebrated the start of the new millennium with a huge party in Berlin that also marked the 35th anniversary of Private Media Group. The share price was at an all time high of $15-$20 dollars. The Economist, Forbes and Vogue were all writing about Private and writing about the man at its helm: Berth Milton (Junior). Because there was only one Berth Milton by now that mattered, and that was Junior.

Whatever reluctance Milton Junior had about projecting the lifestyle that Senior tried to impress with, he soon embraced it, but with an upgrade. He would have the sharpest tailored suits to meetings with bankers and investors – Chase, ABN Amro, Citicorp, Morgan Stanley (the list goes on) all wanted a stake of Private – because in the Clinton years, sex was no longer dirty. He would have the most fashionable shirts, slacks and shoes on the Private yacht (‘Private Lady’) moored just off the coast in Cannes during the film festival and the parallel Hot d’Or awards. The company won over 130 adult industry awards, including 13 Venus awards in 2004 for its “Millionaire” big budget production. It made household names of adult stars like Rita Faltoyano, Helen Duval and Silvia Saint, who emerged from the ashes of the Communist eastern European countries to become the faces (and other body parts) of Private. Perhaps by being like his father externally would make Senior realise what a chip off the block Junior was and even if Senior couldn’t love him, he would respect Junior.

Resentment was, however, the only feeling Senior felt as he must have flicked through the latest issues of Private or read the interviews with Junior as he posed on golf courses or leaned against a flash car or motorcycle. The Prince was living the King’s life, but the king was not dead and felt that he should never have surrendered his kingdom.

Meanwhile Junior was facing the same problems Senior had in the form of the never ending probes from the tax man, that made him feel as violated as any of his adult actresses might have been on the set of one of his films. Junior had a reputation for being miserly and if he wasn’t going to pay his performers, colleagues or suppliers decently, he sure as hell wasn’t going to surrender large sums of cash to the Swedish state. The fact that Private was a public company, with investors and quarterly earnings reports, didn’t make him feel more charitable towards paying his debts. But now tattooed bikers were threatening his family. Hell’s Angels were coming to get them, with Senior believed to have promised them a stake in Private, once he got his hands on it again.

Ultimately Junior had to cut a deal with the police and authorities. It was not just his life at stake but the safety of his wife and children too. Junior might never gain the love of his despotic old father, but he wasn’t going to risk his family. So a sting operation was planned where Junior was going to meet with a ‘representative’ (think biker ‘torpedo’) of Senior to discuss a possible deal that would involve a significant ‘downpayment’ (just don’t call it “blackmail”). But Junior knows that it is probably just a pretext for his father to have him eliminated completely. So he sits in the empty McDonalds late one night in central Stockholm, looking at the watch, while the police are in the car outside. He doesn’t know if they will be able to observe, video film and listen in on what will happen and intervene fast enough. In the end three men enter, order food, have a brief exchange with Junior and are then arrested by the police a few minutes after leaving, when their van is pulled over.

One of the three men was ultimately convicted, while there was insufficient evidence against the other two, But Junior still did not feel safe and had a bodyguard follow him and his family wherever they went for the next year. But it was the last time his father would attempt to wrestle back control. Senior died alone in his Stockholm flat in February 2006. He never made peace with his son and the photo album book he gave his son when he was 11 was the only concrete token of affection that Junior ever had from dad in his whole life. The Prince of Porn was now formally King, but his reign would prove very short lived.

Act V – Losing an Empire and Finding Yourself

“It’s 100 euro to strip, 200 euro for vaginal and 300 euro for anal sex.” I’m in Barcelona, the year is 2014 and the situation is not what you might think. The man sitting across from me is not a pimp but a friendly former banker, the new CEO of the Private Media Group, explaining the current per-scene cost of hiring an actress to perform in one of their film shoots in Prague. The important thing is that there is no dialogue because the films have to be dubbed into local languages wherever they are sold, so the films have to feature voice overs. Also easier and faster to shoot when the performers don’t have to memorize or do retakes of dialogue. I’m given the nine page copy of the script of one of their latest films, something to do with vampires.

I’m in Barcelona to sign an agreement with Private Media Group for Klubb Super 8 to release the “King Porno” documentary. There have been several films and television programs made about Berth Milton Junior, both in Sweden and elsewhere, but the film in our collection is unique in terms of being about Senior. Private Media Group has one small request that we are happy to honour and there is no obstacle to us releasing the film. Meanwhile I get an insight into Private 3.0.

Berth Milton Junior is out. He was found to owe the Swedish state close to one billion Swedish kronor (around a hundred million US dollars) in taxes and penalties. The only solution was to declare himself bankrupt. The same tall building in Barcelona that houses both the Private Media Group and Junior’s penthouse apartment was taken over by the banks and a new CEO was installed, one with a proven track record in finance, to turn the company around – again. Sensibly none of Milton Junior’s children or family appear to want to continue the family legacy.

Walking through the offices I could be in an internet publication HQ – think Buzzfeed or Vice – only on the screen are the kind of explicit images being flicked through that would have the HR department give you marching orders if you were caught viewing them during office hours in any other business. This is the Internet age and it has not been kind to Private. Piracy has hit the porn industry harder than it did Hollywood and, besides, who wants to go to kiosks to buy paper magazines when instant nakedness is available on your computer, tablet or smartphone. The shares of Private are now worth pennies instead of dollars and a zero has been shaved off what the porn actors are paid these days.

Milton Junior lost his father but seems to have found his heart, just as his business empire crumbled. He won public sympathy in Sweden when the children’s cancer fund and the homeless mission both refused his donations. He promised to spend millions building schools and hospitals in Botswana instead, where nobody would ask where the money came from and how it was earned.

The year before I went to Barcelona to meet his replacement, Milton Junior was photographed back in Sweden at a bar together with Thomas Möller, former head of the Swedish chapter of Hell’s Angels. He was staying at the luxury Renaissance hotel instead of his usual residence, said to be a luxury villa in Mauritius, together with his new family – his 23 year old girlfriend Michelle. He still owes the Swedish state SEK 927 million. It is not known if he visited his father’s grave during his brief return to Sweden.

Klubb Super 8 has yet to release the documentary about Berth Milton Senior, posing in front of his Rolls-Royce for the Japanese film crew, the young Berth Junior looking on just outside the shot, not seeing a porn king but only his dad.

The post Prince Porno and the Five Act Tragedy of the Private Empire appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.