News

February 3, 2009 - [ indieWIRE ]

A group of world and U.S. premieres were unveiled by the AFI Dallas Film Festival, including the world debut of docs One Nation, Playground and Rock Prophecies as well as the U.S. debuts of Food, Inc., Gigantic, and The Seven of Daran during the event taking place March 26 - April 2. Festival favorites from the past year, including Steve McQueen’s Hunger (UK), Brett Gaylor’s RIP: A Remix Manifesto, Anthony Fabian’s Skin (UK/South Africa), and Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s Sugar (U.S.).

January 26, 2009 - [ Variety ]

Brendan Fraser will star in and Roger Kumble will direct Furry Vengeance, a live-action family comedy that will start production by early summer. 

Fraser will play a real estate developer whose new housing subdivision pushes far into a pristine part of the Oregon wilderness, pitting the developer against a band of angry critters.

Summit Entertainment and Participant Media are co-financing and co-producing the movie, marking their first collaboration since announcing a multipic distribution deal last week.

January 26, 2009 - [ Variety ]

Brendan Fraser will star in and Roger Kumble will direct Furry Vengeance, a live-action family comedy that will start production by early summer.  Fraser will play a real estate developer whose new housing subdivision pushes far into a pristine part of the Oregon wilderness, pitting the developer against a band of angry critters. Summit Entertainment and Participant Media are co-financing and co-producing the movie, marking their first collaboration since announcing a multipic distribution deal last week

January 19, 2009 - [ Hollywood Reporter ]

Food Inc., Mid-August Lunch Among Screenings
 

COLOGNE, GERMANY--The Berlinale has finalized the menu for this year's Culinary Cinema sidebar and the spread is a typical smorgasbord of documentaries and dramas with a meaty cuisine hook.

January 9, 2009 - [ The Hollywood Reporter ]

Mark Waters is in negotiations to direct Minimum Wage, a timely comedy from Participant Media that tackles the effects of greed. Peter Abrams, Robert Levy and Andrew Panay are producing.
 

January 12, 2009 - [ Variety ]

Chicago 10 was nominated for an Ace Eddie Award for best documentary.

January 12, 2009 - [ Gourmet Retailer ]

In 1990, cookbook author and educator Richard Grausman launched the nonprofit Careers Through Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP) in New York City. Today, the program—designed to enhance the culinary arts curriculum in public schools and better prepare underserved students for college and career opportunities in the restaurant and hospitality industry—operates in some 200 schools around the country.

December 9, 2008 - [ Variety ]

The 14th annual Broadcast Film Critics Association Critic's Choice Awards nominees were announced yesterday, including a Best Documentary nomination for Standard Operating Procedure. 
 

December 5, 2008 - [ Chicago Sun Times ]

CHICAGO, IL--Film critic Roger Ebert has named Standard Operating Procedure one of the best films of 2008: "About what photographs are and how we see them, focusing on the infamous prison torture photographs from Abu Ghraib. Errol Morris' scrutiny reveals what was really happening, and why, and how the photographs do not always show what they seem to. He introduces the name of Charles Graner, who always stayed in the shadows, but without whom there might have been no photos at all."

November 28, 2008 - [ Time ]

...To summarize Syriana, writer-director Stephen Gaghan's drama about petro-politics, you would need a book the size of The 9/11 Commission Report. Hopscotching across the globe, packing enough plots for half a dozen thrillers, refusing easy judgments of its characters, the film has a worldview that is mature, synoptic, careworn--light-years from the standard Hollywood movie. The closest we can get to pegging Syriana in a phrase: it's smart. Gaghan wrote the script for Traffic, whose three complex story...
 

October 25, 2008 - [ Globe and Mail ]

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but which words depends on who's looking. Every month, Evan Solomon sends an unidentified image to someone in the public eye along with a challenge: Give it a title and share the ideas and experiences it evokes. Today, the muckraking journalist and author of Fast Food Nation talks about what's wrong with the corporate food chain.
 

October 9, 2008 - [ Variety ]

Erin Stam joins Participant Media as VP of Production.

 

September 17, 2008 - [ Cultural Diplomacy News ]

Last week, Imagenation Abu Dhabi, a government backed subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Media Company joined Participant Media, a U.S. media company focused on producing movies with a message, among them Fast Food Nation and Darfur Now.
 

September 16, 2008 - [ WaxWord ]

Hollywood has a new player and he’s in Abu Dhabi. Edward Borgerding, CEO of the Abu Dhabi Media Company (ADMC): "For us to manage our portfolio, numerically and creatively, it’s interesting for us to deal with companies like Participant, where we can have access to storytelling and storytellers."
 

September 14, 2008 - [ Variety ]

The Visitor, Tom McCarthy's tale of a widower who takes up the cause of an illegal immigrant couple he finds living in his NYC apartment, picked up the Grand Prize at the 34th Deauville Festival of American Film on Sunday night.

September 10, 2008 - [ Variety ]

Participant Media has found a financing partner in Abu Dhabi-based Imagenation, which will provide $250 million to fund a slate of up to 18 films over the next five years.
 

September 10, 2008 - [ The Hollywood Reporter ]

As financing sources dry up globally, Participant Media has launched its first film fund -- a $250 million revolving equity and debt facility -- by going where the money is these days: the Middle East.
 

August 1, 2008 - [ MediaRights.org ]

The Shortlist article series is your opportunity to learn about the films that inspire intellectual, artistic and activist leaders -- leaders like Wendy Cohen. We asked Wendy to share her favorite films and her thoughts on the power of documentary to change the world. So what films make Wendy Cohen's Shortlist?
 

July 29, 2008 - [ The Hollywood Reporter ]

TORONTO, CANADA--The Toronto International Film Festival will go green in September with world premieres for Robert Kenner's Food, Inc. ... U.S.-based Kenner's Food, Inc., based on reporting by Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan, is backed by Jeff Skoll's Participant Media, which was behind Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

July 29, 2008 - [ indieWIRE ]

Twenty-six documentaries have been added to the lineup for the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival ... Food, Inc., directed by Robert Kenner, USA (World Premiere) Drawing upon the reportage of Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma), this searing investigation explores the dramatic changes that big business has imposed on how and what we eat.