New Locarno Chief Talks Working With Streamers & Studios, Being A Marvel Fan, 2021 Festival Vision & COVID Planning

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorWhen Peter Macdissi first began going on auditions, there weren’t many roles for a young man from the Middle East.“It’s getting better,” the 46-year-old Lebanese actor and producer tells Variety. “On TV, there are some things right now, and it’s really getting better.

David Dinkins, who served as New York City's first and only Black mayor during the 1990s, has died at 93. Dinkins' health aide found him unresponsive in his Lenox Hill apartment Monday night, the New York Post reported. The NYPD confrimed the report.

the COVID-19 pandemic, many rich New Yorkers fled the city to retreat to more secluded places.

The date has been set for R Kelly’s New York trial on sexual abuse charges. It will begin on 7 Apr 2021, with jury selection taking place the previous day.Kelly has been held in custody ever since being arrested in July last year and faces charges in multiple American states.

Marta Balaga Cinematographer Frederick Elmes, who was named as the winner of EnergaCamerimage Film Festival’s First Look – TV Pilots Competition on Saturday for his work on the Amazon series “Hunters,” spoke about the show’s first episode “In the Belly of the Whale” during an online Q&A earlier this week.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentBrooklyn-based distributor KimStim has acquired North American rights to Brazilian director Maya Da-Rin’s feature debut “The Fever” (“A Febre”), which world premiered in competition at Locarno and played at Toronto in 2019.The film is represented in international markets by Pierre Menahem’s French sales banner Still Moving, who negotiated the deal on behalf of the producers with KimStim’s Mika Kimoto.

French television festival Series Mania has pushed back its 2021 event from mid-March to late May-early June amid concerns the ongoing coronavirus pandemic will restrict public events and international travel. Series Mania 2021, originally scheduled for March 19-27, will now be held in Lille, France from May 28 to June 5.

Michele Amabile Angermiller Heavy metal titan and founder of Megaforce Records/Crazed Management Jonny Zazula — best known in metal circles as Jonny Z — is tantamount for giving a voice and a platform to what was once an underserved and underrepresented musical community.All that changed in 1981 when Zazula and his wife, Marsha, opened a record store (with only 21 imports to start) in the Route 18 flea market located in East Brunswick, N.J.

Erykah Badu is revealing the inconsistent test results that she got back after taking a COVID-19 test.

Variety published this week a digital Chile Documentary Spotlight, looking at one of Latin America’s fastest-evolving content production scenes, galvanized by changing narratives, historic socio-political upheaval and unprecedented opportunities in distribution presented by global platforms.Chilean documentaries and projects have and will feature at many of the year’s most high-profile documentary get-togethers including Switzerland’s Vision du Reel, where Francisco Bermejo’s “The Other One”

Cynthia Littleton Business EditorDisney CEO Bob Chapek hinted to Wall Street analysts Thursday that the company is set to get more aggressive in offering some new theatrical titles via a Disney Plus paid download, as it did in September with “Mulan.”With many theaters still shuttered in the U.S. because of coronavirus, Disney opted to make “Mulan” available for $29.99 download via Disney Plus, as a paid add-on for subscribers.

Chief of Patrol Juanita Holmes is making history as the New York Police Department’s first Black woman named to the role. But with 33 years on the police force, the largest in the country, she’s no stranger to the city – and how to work with its many officials.  Holmes, who joined the force in 1987 at 23 years old, succeeds Chief Fausto Pichardo, who held the role for just shy of one year before retiring from the department last month.

Teresa Giudice has a mini me: her daughter Gia! The brunette beauty, 19, who is the eldest child of the Real Housewives of New Jersey star, has been reunited with her dad Joe Giudice for the first time in months, and is the spitting image of her mom in these new clips. Gia and her sister Milania flew to Italy this week to see their dad, who is living in room.

joked.“And he said we’d forget about coronavirus after the election,” New York Times opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo joked, referring to a frequent statement from Trump and his associates that implies Democrats are only pretending to care about the disease.Also Read: News Networks Battle 'Elephant in the Room' - Not Calling States for Joe Biden Despite Vote CountBloomberg, which broke the story, said it isn’t clear when Meadows tested positive, only that he informed people who work closely with