Director Samir Mallal has joined bicoastal/international production house Smuggler for U.S. representation.
A native Canadian, Mallal studied communications at Concordia University in Montreal. Upon graduating, he interned at the National Film Board of Canada, a longstanding pioneer of documentary filmmaking. After a riot erupted at Concordia between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli activists, Mallal followed and filmed three students closely involved. The footage evolved into Discordia, his first of three collaborations with director Ben Addelman. Discordia was an unexpected hit on the documentary circuit and traveled the world as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.
Mallal spent six months in India and followed a group of hard working and hard partying outsourced call-center employees for his next effort, Bombay Calling, also co-directed with Addelman. The documentary was nominated for a Canadian TV Academy Award (Gemini) and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.
Nollywood Babylon, Mallal’s third film teaming him with Addelman, examines the explosive popularity of Nollywood, Nigeria’s burgeoning film industry. It was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Nollywood Babylon was picked up by Lorber Films and was selected for special showcases at the British Museum, MOMA and the Smithsonian Institute.
Tropicana’s “Arctic Sun,” Mallal’s first commercial–produced by Radke Film Group, Toronto–won a Gold Lion at the 2010 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Also at the Cannes Ad Fest, Mallal was also selected for the Saatchi and Saatchi New Directors Showcase largely on the strength of “Arctic Sun.”
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More