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AMPAS
president Robert Rehme tells Jeffrey R Sipe why the Academy Awards
are more popular than ever with countries across the globe.
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"It's
extremely important", says AMPAS President and Hollywood producer,
Robert Rehme, speaking of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film,
"because it is international and it extends interest in film and
the Academy Awards around the world"
Rehme, of course, has much more on his plate than just the Foreign
Oscar. He oversees all of the Academy's year-round activities, such
as the Center for Motion Picture Study, grants to film-makers, film
festival outreach programmes, motion picture restoration and various
retrospectives of directors and performers. Nevertheless, this year's
Foreign
Oscar has presented something of a special situation.
Given 1999's record number of entries, you'd think that submissions
had been flooding in for months. Not so, it turns out.
"Two weeks before the deadline", Rehme confides, "we didn't
think we were gonna have enough titles. Something like 12 films
had been submitted by that point".
Then the floodgates opened. Films came from nations as diverse as
Bhutan, Nepal and Tadjikistan. And from just about everywhere else,
come to that.
"All three Chinas - the People's Republic, Taiwan and Hong Kong
- have submitted films", Rehme recounts with a hint of pride. "There
are a lot of films coming from Eastern Europe, as well - from countries
that were previously behind the Iron Curtain... Everybody understands
the importance of an Oscar nomination". But to what does Rehme attribute
this year's exceptional jump in Foreign Language submissions? "Well",
ventures Rehme, who has produced such titles as Patriot Games, Clear
And Present Danger and Joan Of Arc: The Virgin Warrior, "the moving
picture business internationally is big and healthy".
And "Oscar", after all, sounds the same in every language.
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