Halle Berry Steals Oscar Show

Halle Berry stole the show at Sunday's Oscars, becoming the first black woman to win a best actress Academy Award and accepting it with a weeping, emotion-filled speech that bought tears to the eyes of her worldwide audience.

Berry, 33, a rising star but hardly a household name, won for her role as a woman overtaken by rage and frustration in the racially charged movie "Monster's Ball" that is considered her best performance in a 10-year career.

A Beautiful Mind may have won the best picture award, but the whole town is talking about two other victories and how Oscar history was made in a matter of minutes.

For the first time in Oscar's 74 years, two black performers walked off with awards on Sunday for best actor and best actress: Denzel Washington for Training Day and Halle Berry for Monster's Ball.

The victories – accompanied by a powerful, emotion-filled speech by Berry – brought the Oscar audience of industry movers and shakers at the Kodak Theatre to their feet.

With tears streaming down her face and gasping for breath, Berry dedicated her award to all the African-American women who had struggled before her to make their way in Hollywood.

"This moment is so much bigger than me. It's for every nameless, faceless woman of colour that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened," she said.

"I am so honored, I'm so honored, and I thank the Academy for choosing me to be the vessel from which this blessing might flow," Berry said, telling reporters afterward that she wondered how she would make it up the steps to the stage.

When asked backstage if Hollywood was colour blind, Berry said, "I hope this means they won't not see our colour. That's what makes us so unique. ... I just hope we maybe will start to be judged on our work, and not our skin."

Washington, who earned a best actor Oscar playing a corrupt cop in Training Day, added backstage, "There's been a lot of talk about race ... this is an award to an actor."

A big winner

The other big winner at the 74th Annual Academy Awards was A Beautiful Mind, which earned four Oscars for best adapted screenplay for Akiva Goldsman, best supporting actress for Jennifer Connelly, best director for Ron Howard and the night's top honor, best motion picture.

But this Oscar ceremony will be one that goes down in the history books as a breakthrough for black actors because of Berry's and Washington's victories.

The awards to Washington and Berry shattered a glass ceiling in an industry where blacks often get short shrift and few dramatic Oscar-eligible roles.

Washington was only the second black man to claim the best actor Oscar. Sidney Poitier was the first with 1963's Lilies of the Field.

Poitier was on hand to accept an honorary Oscar for his more than 50 years in the movies, and he sought to downplay the notion of a "breakthrough."

"To speak of Hollywood as if there has not been change is unfair. You can question the pace of it. You can question how long it will last. But you ought to ... take note of the fact there has been change."

Berry steals show: Still, the night was easily and winningly stolen by Berry, who took a big risk in her role as a down-and-out waitress who falls in love with a white racist in Monster's Ball.

Berry, 33, dedicated her award to all the African-American women who had struggled before her to make their way in Hollywood. She mentioned her heroine Dorothy Dandridge, the first and, until Berry, the only black woman to be nominated for a best actress award. Berry had won an Emmy for a television film based on her life.

Washington, 47, was a sentimental favorite, having lost two years ago for The Hurricane, and for other past performances, such as his portrayal of slain Black Muslim leader Malcolm X.

In his acceptance speech, Washington looked to where Poitier was sitting and said, "I'll always be chasing you Sidney. I'll always be following in your footsteps."

Halle Berry: A brief profile

(Halle Berry Interview) Halle Berry became the first black woman to win a best actress Oscar on Sunday night, sending crashing a colour bar that has stood for 74 years.

A former pageant beauty queen, Halle Berry, 33, was a model before getting into television in 1989 and is currently the face of Revlon cosmetics.

Her big screen breakthrough came in 1991 when she was cast as a crack addict in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, and she went on to supporting roles in The Flintstones and the 1998 political satire Bulworth.

Her biggest acclaim came for her role in the 1999 television movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, in which she played 1950s black movie star Dandridge whose struggles to be accepted in racist Hollywood paved the way for actresses like Berry today.

Berry, who also served as one of the executive producers, won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her performance.

Dandridge served as Berry's entree into the acting A list, while her model looks and intuitive fashion sense made her a natural on the red carpets of premieres and award shows.

In Monster's Ball she played a down-and-out waitress who strikes up a love affair with a white racist prison guard (Billy Bob Thornton) working on death row. The guard was one of the men responsible for executing the woman's husband.

The movie was praised by critics and Berry in particular has been singled out for a performance that is brave both in its realism and its use of one explicit sex scene.

The complexity of its themes, and its relatively limited release schedule have made it only a modest performer at the box office.

Denzel Washington: A brief profile

(Denzel Washington Interview) Denzel Washington won the best actor Oscar on Sunday for his role as a corrupt cop training a young rookie in Training Day, the first black actor to win in that category since Sidney Poitier won in 1963.

Washington, 47, was a sentimental favorite, having lost two years ago for The Hurricane, and for other past performances such as perhaps his most demanding part as slain Black Muslim leader Malcolm X in the movie of the same name.

Washington made his first big screen appearance in Carbon Copy in 1981. In 1982 he was chosen for the plum role of Dr. Chandler in NBC's hit medical series St. Elsewhere.

Through the 1980s and 1990s he worked in movies and television. A tall, striking leading man, Washington had won an Oscar for best supporting actor for his portrayal of a runaway slave in Glory in 1989.

He normally portrays men of conscience and everyday characters caught up in a situation beyond their control, such as in his current hit John Q, an emergency room hostage drama.

Shrek wins Best Animated Film Oscar

Shrek, the animated tale of a gentle green ogre who rescues a princess, won the first-ever Oscar for an animated feature film on Sunday.

Representing the animated film produced by DreamWorks was Aron Warner, a first-time Oscar nominee. The anti-fairy tale, featuring the voices of Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers, was among the top grossing films of 2001, and was promoted by some backers as a possible contender for Best Picture.

"Thanks for inviting us to the party," Warner said. The film "took five years and over 500 people to bring to life so I am incredibly honoured to be up here on behalf of the entire team."

Thanking the "incredible cast," Warner gave special mention to DreamWorks producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, "who has a love for animation that borders on obsession and who is the real reason we are here tonight."

The ill-tempered ogre Shrek, voiced by "Austin Powers" actor Mike Myers, enters into a pact with Farquaad -- voiced by John Lithgow -- under which he will free Shrek's life from strangers if he agrees to help him rescue Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), who he wants to marry but who has been captured by a dragon.

The action of the film was brought to life with new state-of-the-art digital animation technology pioneered by DreamWorks with a specially-developed computer and stunning voice performances by an all-star cast of actors.

Producers were intent on not only creating stunning graphics, they also wanted real characters to emerge through the new computer-generated technology that brought to life the children's book by William Steig.

"Diary," "Amelie" hit U.S. biz in west Europe

The market share of American movies in western Europe dropped to 66% in 2001, down from 74% the previous year, according to figures published by the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO).

European movies enjoyed their best year since 1997, with "Bridget Jones's Diary," "Amelie," "The Others" and "Manitou's Shoe" making the top 20 in terms of admissions.

The EAO classes "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (the picture's Euro title), the year's No. 1 movie, as an American, not a British picture.

In the U.S., European pictures also increased their market share, from 3.6% to 4.5% -- still short of the 5.5% registered in 1999 and the 5.4% in 1997.

The EAO's figures for western Europe are based on admissions in eight countries -- Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the U.K.

Full statistics on 2001 admissions across these countries, plus Estonia, Latvia, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey can be found on the EAO's Lumiere database, at http://lumiere.obs.coe.int.

No Man's Land beats Lagaan to the Oscar

Bollywood’s ballyhooed blockbuster Lagaan came up short for the best foreign picture at the 74th Academy Awards on Sunday when black performers made history by walking away with the best actor and best actress prizes.

Lagaan was beaten to the golden statuette by No Man’s Land, an underrated Bosnian film about Serbian and Bosnian soldiers trapped together in a war situation. The film, which earlier won the Golden Globe for foreign films, also pipped the odds-on favourite Amelie, the French entry, to the award.

In the end, realism triumphed the hype and hoopla --much of it in India over Lagaan. The Bollywood bid for an Oscar was based more on hope than any realistic chance despite all kinds of wishful thinking and rationalisation by Indians about why it should get the coveted award.

In sharp contrast to Lagaan epic scale, length, and drama, No Man’s Land is a short, brutal, contemporary, and darkly comic look at war. It was shot on a shoe-string budget, mostly in a single trench in a war zone "Bosnian minimalism," Director Danis Tanovic called it.

Tanovic dedicated his award to the people of Bosnia, although they were not exactly holding their breaths unlike the millions back home.

Lagaan makers, Producer Aamir Khan and Director Ashutosh Gowarikar, present at the ceremony with their spouses, took the miss in their strike, applauding Tanovic before filtering out to the parties after the exhausting four-hour plus ceremony.

At 260 minutes, the ceremony was longer than Lagaan, and more tedious than any year in recent memory. Much of America had gone to sleep by the time the event ended close to 1 am on the East Coast.

But the high point of the evening centered round what many saw as the black renaissance in Hollywood. Denzel Washington (for Training Day) and Halle Berry (for Monster’s Ball) walked away with the best actor and best actress prizes, the first time in the Academy’s 74-year history that blacks have won both awards.

That followed an honorary Oscar for Sidney Poitier, the first black actor to win the award for best actor in 1963, for his contribution to cinema. The Awards ceremony was also hosted by an African-American, Whoopie Goldberg, whose many ironic and self-deprecating jokes about racism, real and perceived, lent colour to the sometimes dull proceedings.

As in most years, there was no one film sweeping the awards. A Beautiful Mind, the saga of a Nobel Prize winning mathematician who hovers between genius and schizophrenia, won four awards including Best Picture and Best Director (for Ron Howard).

Movie studios tout first DVD bust in U.S.

A rogue DVD-burning lab was shut down by law enforcement in New York on Friday, the first time that's happened in the United States, according to the movie studios' trade association.

The Motion Picture Association of America said it helped the New York police department shut down an unlicensed DVD-copying operation based out of a Bronx apartment.

These types of raids and closures have become increasingly common in the past several years when it comes to videocassettes and illegally distributed CDs. But this was the first such raid on a DVD-production operation in the United States, the MPAA said.

"Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement. "We are grateful to the NYPD for their outstanding police work."

The movie industry has ratcheted up the pace of its complaints about online video piracy in recent months, as analysts report that hundreds of thousands of copies of feature films are traded or downloaded every day using file-swapping applications or other means.

But much of the industry's efforts are still dedicated to physical piracy. The MPAA estimates that the industry loses about $3 billion to non-Internet piracy per year. Much of that has come in the form of illegally copied videos, DVDs and video discs in Asia.

The New York raid caught a relatively small fish in its net. Police said they confiscated two computer towers, 15 DVD burners, 1,208 copies of pirate DVDs and about $5,200 in cash. Only one person was arrested.

While many pirate operations do operate on this limited scale, authorities have shut down some many times larger. One of the largest found last year was in England, where police closed a lab containing more than 1,100 videocassette recorders making duplicate copies of movies.

Some of the movies found haven't yet been released to video, including "The Lord of the Rings," "Training Day" and "Ali."

Mipdoc 2002: More Documentaries Than Ever !

At the Screenings producers and distributors of non-fiction will present over 1,300 programs, 50% of which are brand new titles.

In the wake of September 11th a wealth of Current Affairs and History programs will come to Cannes.

Over 1,300 documentary programs (figure as of March 15th) will be presented to international buyers at the 5th MIPDOC which will be held on April 13 and 14 in Cannes, at the Hotel Martinez just prior to MIPTV. This is the highest number of programs showcased since the creation of MIPDOC in 1998.

In the post-September 11th television landscape audiences have developed an appetite for news-based documentaries that explain what happened under a variety of angles. Viewers around the world are eager to access more information on current world affairs, understand their historical causes and explore distant cultures and systems of belief.

This trend is reflected at MIPDOC. In 1998, Nature, Discovery and Wildlife documentaries were the leading category and the one buyers screened the most. In 2001, the trend bucked: Nature, Discovery and Wildlife programming moved to 4th position, behind the “History”, “Current Affairs” and “Culture / Arts / Music” categories. In 2002, Current Affairs, History and Ethnology programs have increased by 32% and 29.5%, respectively, since last year, adding up to 237 Current Affairs programs (180 last year), and 263 History and Ethnology programs (203 last year).

In total, 19 programs focusing on the events of September 11th and their after-effects will be presented at MIPDOC 2002.

Another trend visible at MIPDOC this year is the growing importance of the use of special FX. Since BBC Worldwide’s landmark “Walking With Dinosaurs”, producers and distributors of non-fiction entertainment are bringing together great story-telling with cutting edge CGI. At MIPDOC Discovery will launch “When Dinosaurs Roamed” and BBCWW will show “Walking With Beasts”. CGI technology is increasingly being used in historical programs such as AAC Fact’s “Cold War Submarines Adventure” (Canada), Cromwell Productions’ “World War II Revisited” (UK) and “The Spanish Armada” from Channel 4 International (UK).

High-tech filming devices, digital technology and how they are impacting the making of documentaries will be the focus of MIPDOC’s conference on April 13. Producers are using everything from IMAX and HDTV, to tiny cameras that can travel inside the human body, surveillance cameras, 16 x 9 and macro-photography. They must select the right gear for their story, be that on land, underwater, in space, at night or inside a living organism. In “The Factual Boom: Getting the Right Gear for the Genre” some of the world’s foremost producers including Alex Holmes, Creative Director of Documentaries, BBC (UK) Nobuo Isobe, Senior Producer, Satellite & Hi-Vision Broadcasting Department (Programming & Development), NHK (Japan), Uwe Kersken, Managing Director, Gruppe 5 Filmproduktion (Germany), Stéphane Millière, President, Gedeon Programmes (France) will show their work and discuss the decisions they made.

Looking into another side of documentary-making, MIPDOC has invited multi award-winning producer Brian Lapping to come discuss his career on April 14. Lapping will finalize co-production agreements in Cannes for his new 2-hour documentary. “Tackling Terror” looks at what happened between the attacks of last September, the downfall of Kandahar and the creation of an interim government of Afghanistan, within the American and its allied governments.

To date 285 buyers have signed up for the screenings, including 66 newcomers (23% of the overall number). New buyer companies include: Odyssey Documentary Channel (Australia), YLE/Swedish Language TV (Finland), Ananas Fernseh & Filmproduktions, N24 (Germany), Hong Kong Cable Television (Hong Kong), Multithematiques Italia (Italy), Buddhist Broadcasting Foundation, KRO Television (Netherlands), Marfilms (Portugal), South African Broadcasting Corporation (South Africa), Mawa Film & Media, Planeta D (Spain), E-Vision (United Arab Emirates) and Sundance Channel (USA).

Among new buyers, Christian Vesper, Executive Director Acquisitions, will handle purchases for the Sundance Documentary Channel the documentary-focused offshoot of the Sundance Channel (the cable channel created by Robert Redford). The soon-to-be-launched network will offer a unique array of rarely seen documentaries with a broad spectrum of topics and styles. From KRO Network, as Head of Current Affairs for a number of news shows, José Distelblom will be on the lookout for very focused, high-end, News-related programs and Human Interest documentaries.

168 production and distribution companies have also signed up to show their programs at MIPDOC including 39 new companies such as AAC Fact (Canada), Kyoto Broadcasting System (Japan), Norwegian Film Institute, HBO Enterprises (USA) and Fireworks International (UK-Canada).

Last year 351 buyers from 185 companies and 52 countries attended the 4th MIPDOC. 1,144 programs were presented by 166 production and distribution companies. Buyers made 9,020 individual screenings during the 2-day event.

MIPTV (International Television Program Market) is the spring’s leading international television program market. Last year it featured 11,049 executives, 2,827 companies from 90 countries including 1,228 exhibiting companies on 481 stands and 2,167 buyers.

MIPTV is organized by REED MIDEM, a world class organizer of top-level international trade events in Cannes and overseas which have become essential business platforms for key industry players. Reed Midem ’s portfolio includes MIPTV, MIPCOM JUNIOR, MIPDOC (television), MIDEM (music), MILIA (interactive media), MIPIM, MAPIC (property) WEM (education) and WAMM (finance – will be launched in December 2003).

REED MIDEM is part of REED EXHIBITIONS (RE), one of the world’s leading organisers of trade and consumer events with a portfolio of over 470 events in 35 countries. Each year, RE brings together over 156,000 suppliers and 9 million buyers from around the globe.