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Film directors Barry Levinson and John Waters talked one-on-one about their films and their connection to Baltimore to the Baltimore Sun. The filmmakers grew up just a few Beltway exits from one another, Levinson in Park Heights, Waters in Lutherville. As the Sun reveals 'Maybe 10 miles, but worlds apart'.

Film News: Special will be available Feb. 26. -- The Visual Effects Society is packaging its annual awards show for the international TV marketplace.

Final ballots for the 81st Academy Awards? were mailed today (January 28) to the 5,810 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Completed ballots must be returned to PricewaterhouseCoopers by 5 p.m. Tuesday, February 17. Ballots received after the deadline will not be counted. Listed on the ballots are nominees in 19 Awards categories. Separate ballots for 5 categories (Documentary Feature, Documentary Short Subject, Foreign Language Film, Animated Short Film and Live Action Short Film) will be distributed after verification of mandatory member attendance at screenings.

A new rumor hits about the funnyman's possible involvement in the film.

Film News: Company stays smart and follows marketplace -- Bavaria Film Intl. was founded in 1997 as part of Bavaria Media GmbH, the global licensing and distribution unit of Bavaria Film group. Since then the distrib has grown into one of Germany's leading global purveyors of domestic and international feature films.

Film News: Conglom is still a major player in Euro media biz -- A big birthday party is taking place this year in Munich. Bavaria Film is celebrating 90 years of tradition and 50 years in its current, postwar incarnation.

Film News: Physical production feeds the pipeline -- One of the largest film and television production facilities in Europe, Bavaria Studios provides the Bavaria Film group with a major advantage over the competition.

International News: Bavaria Film topper seeks to expand operations -- Since taking the helm as co-managing director of Bavaria Film group in 2006, Matthias Esche has sought to usher in an era of transparency while also seeking to expand the production/distribution conglom's vast operations.

For more than half a century, Ken Jacobs has been using found footage and artisanal techniques to craft his own unique, handmade annex to the palace of cinema. Witty and perceptive, mesmerising and provocative, his work is characterised by ravenous curiosity and scathing anti-capitalism, and a fascination with the plasticity of film and how we watch things. Star Spangled to Death, his sly magnum opus of US pop culture and political deviance, took 46 years to complete and lasts six and a half hours, while his Nervous Magic Lantern projection-performances constitute a kind of pure cinema that bypasses celluloid altogether. 'I'm not a technical whiz,' he says of his predilection for experimenting, 'but I'm dogged.'Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son, the seminal 1969 title that remains Jacobs's signature piece, mines the extraordinary riches found within the crowded, chaotic frame of a 1905 tableau-film. Based on Hogarth's etching Southwark Fair, its street vendors, clowns and pickpockets form the

Film Reviews: A gutsy Newark high school principal's efforts to stave off gang violence and boost student morale produce results in Beth Toni Kruvant's heartfelt if erratic documentary, 'Heart of Stone.' The setting is the city's once famed Weequahic High, known for fostering more Ph.D.s than any other American high school from the 1930s-'50s, which makes this chronicle poignant and illustrates how African-Americans and Jewish alum help each other turn the school in a new, safer direction.