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Director Roman Polanski attended the 7th Zurich Film Festival to accept the lifetime achievement award that was intended for him two years ago, to honor his outstanding career achievements as a filmmaker. Almost two years to the day, Polanski was arrested on his way to the festival ceremony to receive the award.

The World Premiere of a full-length non fiction film followed the ceremony. In the documentary, Polanski reportedly briefly addressed the sexual assault case, with the bulk of the film dedicated to his childhood in German-occupied Poland, including his escape from the Warsaw ghetto and his early life and career.

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Greek-cypriot film director Michael Cacoyannis died in Athens on Monday aged 89, his cultural foundation said reports AFP.

Cacoyannis shot to fame with the triple-Oscar winning “Zorba the Greek” in 1964, an adaptation of the Nikos Kazantzakis-penned novel which starred Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates and Irene Pappas among others. He was also know for his film “Electra”, based on the Euripides tragedy, which received two awards at Cannes in 1962.

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[caption id="attachment_1407" align="alignnone" width="560"]Leonard Kastle stands in front of a poster of The Honeymoon Killers[/caption]

One-hit writer and director, Leonard Kastle, of his first and only film, “The Honeymoon Killers,” reportedly died May 18 at his home in Westerlo, N.Y., after a brief illness, said Tina Sisson, a friend. He was 82.

“The Honeymoon Killers,” released in 1970, is described as a “grimly realistic, low-budget, black-and-white crime drama about a lowlife lothario and his overweight nurse lover whose partnership in conning lonely women leads to murder.”

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Actress Jane Seymour reportedly said to CNN at the red carpet premiere of her new IFC movie “Love Marriage Wedding” on May 17 that she believed “there will be lots of information coming people’s way…I heard about two more [out of wedlock kids] somebody else knows about. I even met someone who knows him well.”

Yesterday on “The View” Friday, Seymour regretted her remarks, saying, “I’m so beyond sorry and appalled that I found myself even talking on the subject at all.”

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Love Marriage Wedding is directed by Dermot Mulroney and stars Mandy Moore, Kellan Lutz, James Brolin, Jane Seymour, Jessica Szohr, Michael Weston, Sarah Lieving, Joe Chrest. In the film, Mandy Moore is a marriage counselor whose life as a newly wed married to Kellan Lutz is turned upside down when she discovers her parents’ happy marriage is unexpectedly headed for divorce. Determined to reconcile her parents for their 30th anniversary surprise party she stops at nothing plunging from one compromising situation to another.

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[caption id="attachment_1382" align="alignnone" width="560"]Bruce Ricker (that’s him on the left, with Clint Eastwood and Quentin Tarantino) [/caption]

Bruce Ricker — a Cambridge, Massachusetts -based director and producer of documentaries whose best-known film, “The Last of the Blue Devils’’ (1979), is a jazz classic — died of pneumonia Friday in Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge.

He was 68.

Mr. Ricker specialized in documentaries about jazz, popular music, and film history.

Read more in Boston Globe

image via Boston Globe

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Donald Krim, a film distributor, president of’ Kino International, a company founded in 1977 and acquired by Mr. Krim in 1978, died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 65.

Among the films imported by Kino as a result of Mr. Krim’s festival explorations were Percy Adlon’s “Zuckerbaby” (1985), Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s “Himatsuri” (1986) and Michel Khleifi’s “Wedding in Galilee” (1988). Mr. Krim also helped to introduce the work of such art-house stalwarts as the Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai (“Days of Being Wild,” 1990), the Austrian Michael Haneke (“The Piano Teacher,” 2001) and the Israeli Amos Gitai (“Kadosh,” 1999).

Three Kino releases received Academy Award nominations in the best foreign-language film category: Joseph Cedar’s “Beaufort” (2007), Scandar Copti’s “Ajami” (2009) and Giorgos Lanthimos’s “Dogtooth” (2010).

Read more in the NY Times

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[caption id="attachment_1311" align="alignnone" width="533"] Jackie Cooper in SUPERMAN III (1983)[/caption]

Jackie Cooper, Emmy-winning director of “M*A*S*H” and other hits, plus known to moviegoers as Perry White, editor of The Daily Planet, in four “Superman” films died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 88.

His agent, Ronnie Leif, said Mr. Cooper died in a hospital after a short illness.

Read more in NY Times

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Yvette Vickers, an actress best known as the femme fatale in two late 1950s cult horror films, “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” and “Attack of the Giant Leeches,” was found dead Wednesday at her Benedict Canyon home. She was 82.

The body’s mummified state suggests that she could have been dead for close to a year, police said.

Read more in the LA Times

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After announcing that the 8th Beijing Independent Documentary Film Festival has been cancelled, the festival’s artistic director, Zhu Rikun, has reportedly resigned from the festival’s foundation, closed his production house, Fanhall Studio, and fled the Chinese capital.

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Tim Hetherington, the director and producer of the Oscar-nominated Afghan war documentary “Restrepo,” was killed while covering the Libyan conflict in the city of Misurata on Wednesday, and three photographers working beside him were wounded, one fatally, when they came under fire. He was 40 years.

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Oscar winning actress Catherine Zeta-Jones has quit as patron of the Swansea Bay Film Festival and her image has been removed from the festival’s website. This follows the resignation of actor Michael Sheen, who quit as vice president of the festival last month

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