Bulgarian director Boris Despodov won HBO's first Emerging Artist Award for his film Corridor #8 at Canada's Hot Docs festival.
Renowned director Agnieszka Holland has been named the new president of the Polish Film Academy. The members of the Academy nominate and vote for the winners of the Eagle Awards for the best Polish films of the preceding year.
Telefonica 02 Czech Republic a.s. (www.czO2.com) reported first-quarter net profit rose 5.4% year-on-year to 2.4 billion crowns (€327 million) on revenues of 15.4 billion crowns, a rise of 1.5%. The number of TV customers increased to 87,000, a net rise of 14,000 subscribers.
The Czech Film Center will hold its annual presentation of upcoming feature and animated projects at the 21st annual Finále Plzeň festival of Czech films. A total of 70 Czech feature or animated films are in the works this year, 10 more than in 2007.
Muzika, a film by Juraj Nvota about the joys and travails of musicians and music lovers, captured nine awards given by the Slovak Film and Television Academy in a gala ceremony Saturday night in Bratislava, according to the Slovak news agency TASR. The biennial awards to domestic film producers and actors are Slovakia's equivalent of the Oscars.
This year's Karlovy Vary Film Festival will pay tribute to top British filmmaker Nicholas Roeg, who will be on hand during the festival July 4-12 to personally present five of his films. The controversial filmmaker first gained recognition as cameraman on Francois Truffaut's Farenheit 451.
The selection process is under way for the competitions in the 16th Camerimage film festival in Poland. The aim of the competition phase of the festival is to present films of high visual value which will be judged by an international jury.
Andrzej Wajda's Katyń picked up the Eagle award for Best Polish Film of 2008 as well as six other Eagles at this year's ceremony held by the Polish Film Academy on April 14.
Sixteen Polish films are being screened in Moscow during the first "Vistula" Festival of Polish Cinema. The event, which will be held annually, is organized by the Polish Film Institute, the city of Warsaw and Polish Television, according to the institute's website (www.pisf.pl).
The new digital Czech channel TV Barrandov, which plans to launch this summer, has signed a deal with UK- and Australian-based distributor Southern Star International for a package of 21 British and Australian television shows, according to the international publishing company C21 Media
