Latest news with #RebeccaOBrien
CTV News
a day ago
- Entertainment
- CTV News
With streets dry a year after water main break, Montgomery celebrates with a street art festival and night market
35 groups and individuals competed for $1,300 in cash prizes at Chalk the Block Saturday in Montgomery The sidewalks of Montgomery looked quite a bit different Saturday than a year ago, thanks to an imaginative street art festival. The first Montgomery Chalk the Block and Night Market was held Saturday, featuring over 50 people who divided into 35 or so groups to create original chalk art on the street. The theme for the artists was Canada Day and the Bow River, said Rebecca O'Brien, executive director of the Montgomery BIA. '(We've turned it into an) immense art event which, as you can see, is pretty incredible,' O'Brien said. There were four different categories of competitors, including elementary, middle, high school and college/adult. Chalk the Block, June 28, 2025 There were 4 competitive categories offering $1,300 in cash prizes Saturday. (Darren Wright, CTV Calgary) O'Brien said the festival was the brainchild of the previous executive director, who was inspired by chalk artists who compete in Knoxville, Tennessee. 'She was looking for a unique concept for a festival that makes it stand apart and learned about the Dogwood Arts Festival in Knoxville,' O'Brien said. 'She ran with it, but last year there was a water main break.' As far as the night market goes, O'Brien was previously involved with the Inglewood BIA, where they have a popular night market. First street art competition Chalk the Block is Canada's first street art competition and offered $1,300 in cash prizes. The Montgomery Night Market featured curated artisan vendors, a beer garden, live music and street performers. As for whether there will be another Chalk the Block street art festival? 'From the feedback we're getting,' O'Brien said, '100 per cent yes.'
The Guardian
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Simply unworkable': British film industry leaders aghast at Trump's movie tariffs
Leading figures in the British film industry have reacted with a mixture of wariness and bemusement at the prospect of tariffs announced by Donald Trump on movies produced in 'foreign lands'. Rebecca O'Brien, producer of a string of films by Ken Loach including Palme d'Or winners The Wind That Shakes the Barley and I, Daniel Blake says that tariffs appear 'simply unworkable given how intertwined and global the film industry is'. 'I can see that Trump watches Hollywood collapsing and losing its jobs to the rest of the world but that's because it's a very expensive place to make films.' O'Brien added: 'No doubt it'll take a while for the dust to settle, deals to be made and something or nothing to come out of this. What's for certain, though, is there will be a pause in the industry while everyone runs around working out what to do. The fragile film economy definitely doesn't need that.' Colin Vaines, producer of Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool and Coriolanus, said that while it was 'very unclear exactly what President Trump is intending', it appeared 'that his main aim appears to be to return more production to the US, but of course there are many other proposals which might help achieve that to some degree, including incentives like major film tax credits.' Trump's movie tariff announcement came a day after a meeting with actor Jon Voight, one of Trump's so-called 'Hollywood ambassadors', who had proposed 'limited tariffs' as part of a wide-ranging plan to boost US film production. The Queen director Stephen Frears had some sympathy for Voight, saying: 'Trump is as usual hopeless at everything. I feel sorry for poor Jon Voight who, I imagine, made perfectly sensible suggestions. Subsidies, support etc. Trump failed to understand and bolloxed it all up. What a halfwit! Still, nobody got killed.' Mike Figgis, director of the Oscar-winning Leaving Las Vegas said: 'Like a lot of the Trump stuff it makes a good headline. I don't think it will help Hollywood particularly as so much of the productions go to Atlanta now. The more interesting question would be, why are they continuing to make so many bad films at insanely inflated budgets which force them to go shopping overseas?' Mark Cousins, director of A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things, said: 'Film history is full of countries tipping the lever in favour of their own film industries. What's new in Trump's sudden announcement is the unreason, bellicosity and instinctive xenophobia.' The UK appears to be particularly vulnerable to any attempt by the US president to prevent US studios shooting overseas, with suggestions that tariffs could 'wipe out the British film industry'. Figures show that non-British film and TV projects brought in £4.8bn, or 86% of production money spent in the UK, with the recent boom of studio construction – already in trouble – further threatened if productions dry up. Actor Brian Cox described the prospect of tariffs as a 'disaster', adding '[Trump is] not really understanding the point of view of how films are made, and what films cost, [how] the cost of films [has] gone up and the cost of films in America went up considerably … It's a kind of nonsense and a divine ignorance on all their parts.' With political figures such as California state governor Gavin Newsom pushing for a federal tax credit scheme, Jezz Vernon, producer and senior lecturer in film at the University of Exeter, says this could provide a viable alternative. 'If Trump were to authorise and fund bigger regional tax credits in the US in tandem with state governors then we would see a big production shift back to the US. Just last week we saw Netflix move 3 Body Problem from the UK to Hungary to use their tax credit rebate which is higher than the UK.' Vernon also pointed out that reciprocal tariffs would cause major problems: 'It would instantly damage the global economy of Hollywood studios and the streamers – they rely on the economy of scale from worldwide subscribers and audiences to fund and monetise their productions. Instead of aiding Hollywood, the tariffs would immediately damage the central economic model that sustains them.' The British actors' union Equity criticised the 'fragility' of the film and TV industry, with Equity general secretary Paul W Fleming saying: 'A lot of the panic over the past 24 hours is due to the fragility in the system. This can be addressed positively through properly funding our public service broadcasters and ensuring an attractive and fair tax and investment environment for studios and production.' Fleming added: 'America's objective is to generate more productions and more jobs in film. Is that going to be achieved by stopping filming Barbie, which was filmed here on British union agreements, or Wicked or Mission: Impossible? Clearly not. The industry tends to feed itself, so an upturn in American production is a good thing for the UK.' Since making his bombshell announcement, Trump has appeared to row back on his comments, saying he was 'not looking to hurt the industry' and planned to meet with Hollywood leaders.
