Subscribers to Sky will see an overnight change to one of the movie channels when the Sundance Channel is rebranded on November 1 as the Rialto Channel.
This renaming aligns its programming more closely with the Rialto cinema chain owned by Sundance's key shareholder Rialto Entertainment.
The channel previously operated as Sundance under a licensing arrangement with Sundance Channel in the United States. While it will continue to have a working relationship with that channel and access to its product, the new structure will see some of the focus shift to movies which have been screened through the Rialto chain.
In November the channel will offer the Hollywood spoof State In Main and Darren Aranofsky's Requiem For a Dream which charted a descent into dementia through infomercials and diet pills.
The Rialto Channel has also secured The Blair Witch Project and Gosford Park, and is acknowledging its commitment to New Zealand films by signing up Christine Jeffs' Rain and Snakeskin.
Of the documentaries scheduled the most enticing would be the nine-episode epic Baseball by documentary film-maker Ken Burns which looks at this sports place in American culture and psyche. Other titles in the scheduling include screenings of the music programme Later With Jools Holland and the series Film Genre which documents how music is created for film.
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