News in brief - industry roundup
1st May, 2006
Birmingham's Rupak Mann, the winner of Channel 4's 2004 Bollywood Star talent competition, is looking to raise finance to co-produce and star in an Asian film titled 'Swimmer'. Rupak (pictured) is looking to raise up to £1.6 million from a public share offering in her company Dreamfollower Productions PLC.
She has been developing the concept for Swimmer since 2002. Filming is scheduled to commence September 2006, for release in Autumn 2007. It has been in pre-production since January 2006 with Fish Eye Network, a company set up by Bollywood producer Pooja Bhatt.
www.dreamfollower.com
Aziz Rashid has been appointed as the new head of the BBC’s East Midlands region, responsible for all local and regional output. He moves to his new job, based in Nottingham, from BBC News in London, where he is currently weekend editor in charge of BBC 1 bulletins and News 24 coverage.
Aziz joined the BBC in 1989 as a trainee at World Service Radio. After five years there he moved to BBC World TV to work on projects and as editor of the US Election programmes for BBC World and News 24. A start date has still to be confirmed.
Popular Asian web-radio site HistoryTalking.com has launched a new project - Radio2All - as a unique platform for ordinary citizens to showcase and broadcast their creative work on the Internet. Participation requires only to call and record on a given UK telephone number. Longer and more advanced recordings can be sent either as email attachment in MP3 or WAV format.
More on their website
Only a handful of new Black and Asian poets have been published in this country in the past 15 years. Yet thousands (yes, thousands) of poetry books are published each year. So what's going on? The Arts Council and Spread the Word have produced a report about this called Free Verse.
On May 16th an event will be held at the Purcell Room, Royal Festival Hall, which will look into this issue. The panel will consist of: Neil Astley (Bloodaxe Books), Moniza Alvi (Poet), Michael Schmidt (Carcanet) and Fiona Sampson (Editor of Poetry Review). The talkshop will be followed by readings by some of the most exciting emerging Black and Asian poets.
www.rfh.org.uk
Four of the UK’s leading black business role models will reveal the secrets of their success at ‘The Rise and Rise of the Black British Entrepreneurs’ discussion panel and networking reception at The British Library on Monday 15 May.
The panel comprises Tim Campbell, the winner of BBC2’s The Apprentice in 2005, Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones, also known as the “Black Farmer” with his own range of sausages avaialble in all good Supermarkets. Charles Ejogo the founder of Umbrolly and Yana Johnson founder of Yana Cosmetics. The discussion will be chaired by radio presenter Dotun Adebayo (Radio Five Live and BBC London).
