Ramachandran: Last News

Naman Ramachandran Four BBC India staff members have quit and formed a new entity, Collective Newsroom, in order to comply with India’s strict foreign direct investment (FDI) in media rules. The Indian government’s cap on FDI investment in digital news outfits is 26%. BBC World Service India is 99% owned by the BBC.

Naman Ramachandran Seven international broadcast majors have teamed to launch a call for documentary proposals at the ongoing Sunny Side of the Doc market.The international documentary coproduction unit of France Televisions is uniting with partners ZDF (Germany), Channel 4 (U.K.), CBC (Canada), SVT (Sweden), ORF (Austria) and ABC Australia, seeking proposals for high-end documentaries dealing with subjects in two categories. The first category focuses on ancient civilisations, archaeology, paleontology, geology and space exploration and the second on the subject ‘How cutting-edge science can provide solutions to save the planet.’Proposals should ideally be “an epic scientific adventure with international scope, following groups of international scientists in their fieldwork,” with “wide and international audience appeal” and “factual clarity combined with an engaging and emotional approach, creating a sense of awe” and are “visually spectacular, using the best of modern image-making techniques,” according to the broadcasters.

Naman Ramachandran Two women filmmakers will be in the spotlight as part of South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission (KZNFC) activities at the upcoming Cannes Film Market.KZNFC had issued an open call to the industry inviting emerging filmmakers to form part of the Cannes delegation and Bonita Sithebe and Sithabile Mkhize were selected out of several applications received. Written and directed by Sithebe, “The Valley of a Thousand Hills” tells the story of a young woman from a conservative village, who must choose between living a lie to stay the perfect Zulu daughter or risk death for true love.