Film and Music Entertainment (F&ME) Announces the Launch of a new $1 million Development Fund. Fund to be split between F&ME in-house projects and third party properties.

UK-Based Film and Music Entertainment (F&ME) has created a new revolving $1 million development fund backed by a mixture of private equity, EU MEDIA support and in-house financing that is backing a an initial slate of 10 projects for 2009/10.

F&ME, which was named as one of the most active UK producers in the recent statistics published in the UK Film Council’s statistical yearbook is currently in post production on three features: Julius Kemp’s Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre; Antonio Nuic’s Donkey, and Mark Colicott’s A Congregation of Ghosts.

The first project on the slate to be acquired is Shrabani Basu’s Spy Princess, the gripping story of Noor Inayat Khan, Sufi Muslim, descendant of the Tiger of Mysore and one of three women in British SOE during World War 2 to be awarded the George Cross and the Croix de Guerre. Developed in collaboration with Kishwar Desai, the film deals with her recruitment and training as the first female wireless operator to be flown into occupied France . Though instructed by her controller, the famous Maurice Buckmaster to return home, she refused to abandon her post as the last operator in Paris. Eventually she is captured by the Gestapo, tortured and shot at Dachau.

"Noor’s is an amazing story," says producer, Mike Downey, "While in the grip of the Gestapo, she maintained her human dignity and right up until her death she showed no sign of breaking. Noor’s vision and courage were and remain inspirational. The screenplay we are looking to create will bring the story of Noor Inayat Khan to a new generation for whom sacrifices made for freedom are already becoming a footnote in history."

Next in line is the follow up feature film from White Lightnin’ director Dominic Murphy. F&ME principals, Mike Downey and Sam Taylor are working with Murphy on the the Biafra set Jesus Christ Airlines (working title), which is currently being scripted by Kit Peel. Peel, a former journalist in the African circuit and opera libretto writer, is currently writing his version of the events in the lives of one family set against the backdrop of the Biafra Airlift.

"Our partnership on White Lightnin' worked out really well," says director Murphy, "we made an ambitious film with minimal resources and in tough conditions, so we are all enthused about going forward together in this new venture."

For almost two amazing years, the daredevil pilots of Joint Church Aid flew in arms and food to Biafra over Nigerian air space, keeping the small, breakaway West African state alive. Murphy spent part of his childhood in Nigeria with his family.
The film will shoot in South Africa in 2010. Downey and Taylor are no strangers to shooting in Africa having produced the Sundance hit of two years ago, Son of Man, directed by Mark Dornford May in the Khayelitsha township outside Cape Town.

Film And Music Entertainment are also continuing their collaboration with Boris T Matic’s Propeler film with the commissioning of Donkey and All for Free director Antonio Nuic ‘s screenplay entitled Frog. The story takes place on Christmas Eve in a small barber shop. Only two men are in, brothers Zeko and Toni. God, family, honesty, courage are subjects of their fight. Bomb’s and razor blades can’t help them, but a short story seems to. The film will shoot in Zagreb in early 2010.

The fund has also been applied to commission a further draft of The Laughter Clinic which was originally written by The Aristocrats director Paul Provenza. This draft is being written by Stephen Place whose credits include Ballykissangel and a string of musical comedies including Daddy Cool in London’s West End and The Io Passion for the Berliner Kammeroper. The film is developed in association with Tin Pan Films.

The Laughter Clinic is set in a world where all comedy has been banned comedians are now seen as the new subversives. As a result they have gone underground and formed resistance groups, not to fight with arms but to organise illegal comedy shows.
Just delivered is a screenplay entitled The Voyage of the Beagle, written by Mike Downey and to be directed by Stephen Daldry.

Other Film and music Entertainment projects still under option and are in more mature stages of development are Clifford Irvings FAKE! adapted by Michael (Howard Stern’s Private Parts) Kalesniko from Irving’s biography of legendary art fraud Elmyr de Hory; an adaptation of Dorothy Baker’s Cassandra at the Wedding by Bruno Heller creator of TV hit The Mentalist and writer of Rome; Thomas Kennealy’s Victim of the Aurora; Peter Milligan’s The Enemy and Steve Attridge and Mike Downey’s Whodunnit?

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