UK to launch anti-rape scheme in war zones

A team of UK experts will be trained to deploy at short notice to gather evidence in conflict-hit areas.

It is hoped the scheme will mean more perpetrators of sexual violence can be pursued in international courts.

Rape is often used as a tactic of war against men, women and children in conflicts across the globe.

The team of experts will be selected from professions including the police, psychologists, doctors, lawyers, and forensic experts.

Apart from gathering evidence, they will mentor international organisations fighting sexual violence, and help to draft effective legislation.

An audience of public figures and human rights campaigners will witness the launch of the scheme at an event hosted by the Foreign Office.

The actress Angelina Jolie, a special envoy for the United Nations, is expected to give her support to the launch before a screening of her new film, In the Land Of Blood and Honey - a love story set in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

BBC world affairs correspondent Mike Wooldridge said that while sexual violence was frequently used as a weapon of war, conviction rates were still too low.

Countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo will be the project's biggest concern, he said.

Our correspondent says Foreign Secretary William Hague will also use the launch of the initiative to speak about "horrifying reports now starting to emerge" of rape in Syria.

In the run-up to the scheme's launch, Mr Hague said: "Sexual violence is a problem found in every society in the world, and all countries have to do more to tackle it at home.

"But it is in the context of war and conflict that sexual violence is found to the most appalling degree, and on a scale most of us cannot imagine."

In November, Margot Wallstrom, special representative of the United Nations secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, revealed that although up to 50,000 women had been raped during the Balkans conflict, there had been only 30 convictions.

Around 200,000 women of all ages were raped during the war in Congo, which ended in 2003.

In 2010 alone, 8,000 women and girls were raped due to continuing violence in the country.

The British government said it would use the UK presidency of the G8 in 2013 to promote a global approach to tackling sexual violence in war-torn countries and bringing perpetrators to the courts.

rosou wrote:

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LaraD wrote:

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Brad is in Cannes, but we can no longer post images on this thread.

All pics/videos from Cannes are posted here  http://angelinabra6.yuku....-Press-Conference-May-22

Main page of new forum -

http://angelinabra6.yuku.com/directory

All are welcome!

   Well, I'm not sure if I am welcome, though... Tried to get on the forum, but it seems that I must wait to see if I'll be aproved...It used to be so much easier and funnier visiting the Jolie-Pitts forums, here! I haven't been here for a long time and everything is soooo diferent. Best wishes. 

Benedict Cumberbatch to Join TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE

by Dave Trumbore    Posted:May 31st, 2012 at 8:53 pm

Cr Collider

Cumberbatch joins '12 Years a Slave'

'Sherlock' star to play plantation owner

Steve McQueen is directing the pic starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt.

Based on Solomon Northrup's 1853 nonfiction tome, New Regency pic stars Ejiofor as the author, a free man kidnapped and sold into slavery. Cumberbatch will play a plantation owner who buys Ejiofor's character and is won over by his engineering skills.

McQueen co-wrote the script with John Ridley ("Red Tails"). Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner will produce for Plan B.

Production will start at the end of June, and CAA is arranging financing for the pic in addition to repping its U.S. rights.

Cumberbatch, repped by UTA and Conway Van Gelder Grant, has broken out recently in film with strong roles in Paramount's "Star Trek 2," Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" and HBO's "Parades End."

Cr Variety

Brad Pitt goes 'Blonde'; can he jumpstart Marilyn Monroe pic?

But she could be getting another treatment if Brad Pitt and Andrew Dominik have anything to say about it.

The A-list actor has come aboard to produce the filmmaker’s long-gestating drama about the blond bombshell. "We're going to get this one done," Pitt told 24 Frames in a joint interview with Dominik.

Pitt said it's unclear whether he would take a role in the movie as well (suggestions welcome on who he should play) or simply produce. Pitt's been on a bit of a producing hot streak lately: His company, Plan B, was behind two best picture nominees in 2012 ("The Tree of Life" and "Moneyball").

Pitt and Domink collaborated on "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" and the upcoming hit-man movie "Killing Them Softly." "Blonde" would mark a shift from those hard-boiled genres;  it would look at an imagined inner life of the iconic actress, an inner life first imagined by Joyce Carol Oates, who wrote an acclaimed 2000 novel on which the film would be based.

Oates' "Blonde," which also got the TV mini-series treatment a decade ago, has been in feature development since at least 2009, when Dominik began writing a script based on the book. Soon after, the foreign-sales company Wild Bunch began peddling the project.

But it's back on the front burner thanks to Pitt's interest and to some new financing possibilities. Dominik wouldn't comment on the specific progress of the project, but said that shooting it in January or February of 2013 was not out of the realm of possibility.

When it was first incarnated with Wild Bunch, Naomi Watts was slated to play the lead part of Marilyn. But that was a long time ago, and it's likely that the filmmakers would go in a different direction.

It should be noted that "My Week With Marilyn" was hardly a blockbuster performer: It grossed $14 million and garnered mediocre reviews. But that film covered only a small slice of the actress' life. And, in any event, expect a different kind of film from the Australia-based Dominik, who departed from convention with both “Jesse James" (a non-Western Western) and "Killing Them Softly” (which turns the hit-man movie into a meditation on capitalism). Meanwhile, interest in Monroe continues to grow with the 50th anniversary of her death approaching on Aug. 5.

Since coming on the scene with his cult hit “Chopper” in 2000, Dominik hasn't exactly worked at a feverish pace. He took seven years to make "Jesse James" and five for "Killing." "He's got a terrible habit for writing things on spec," Pitt said with a good-natured smile, implying that the rights issues on "Blonde" may have bogged it down too. (Dominik wrote his first draft on spec, that is, without locking down rights.)

But Pitt's brand of surfer-boy intellectual and Dominik's auteur intensity clearly combine for a kind of chemistry, with both of their collaborations yielding solid reviews.  Pitt said that "I think 'Jesse' is going to be the film I'm most proud of when I'm done with this [acting] thing."

Frustrated by the meager box-office for "James," Dominik hopes that "Killing," which hits theaters in September as a Weinstein Co. release, rekindles the industry's interest in the pair's work.

 "I wanted to make a $15-million movie. I wanted to make a movie that was cheap and could make its money back, because I'd like to keep working with Brad and I'd like us to have more expensive playdates than the last one," he said. "I would like to make someone some money."

Generally, he said, he struggles with the balance between passion and pragmatism, which he said may be why he's made just two movies since "Chopper."

"I'd like to make movie, man,” he said. “But I don't want to just make movies. I want to make the movies I want to make."

Cr LATimes