Inside the festival
Festival
The sixth edition has drawn to a close with the participation of over 800 credited operators and 233 producers
The sixth edition of the International Film Market | Business Street closes and confirms the success of the previous editions while announcing important developments for 2012 which were welcomed very positively by all sector operators: the Market activities will be moved to the MAXXI Museum which will work alongside the Via Veneto location. The MAXXI, in addition to being a location of great prestige also has the advantage of being just a few hundred yards from the Auditorium Parco della Musica: the concentration of the spaces will favour exchanges and fruitful collaboration between the Market and the Festival allowing professionals to share their time better between the two events.
A further confirmation of the strength that having a Market close to the Festival entails are the many negotiations that have been entered or even completed during The Business Street activities, among which we'd like to mention the film Hotel Lux by Leander Haussmann, in Competition at the Festival and screened at the Market which has now been purchased for Italian distribution from Archibald Enterprise Film by the International distributor Bavaria Film International.
Another new feature of this sixth edition which has been met with great favour is the "Talents at Work" event, organized with Cinecittà Luce, ANICA and UNEFA which provided an overview of trailers for Italian films still being shot or at the post-production stage as a world première preview for buyers and sellers. Paola Corvino (Intramovies) remarks: “I found the idea of having a screening, at the MAXXI, of films that are still “works in progress”, something I've never seen any where else and I think clients very much appreciated”. The experiment will certainly be repeated next year and the presentation will be further enriched by promotional material and specially produced DVD's for each trailer.
The collaboration between the Market, ANICA and Cinecittà Luce also led to shared choice for the debates, conference and meetings and the common commitment to support Italian cinema.
A great success with remarkable participation was also achieved by the second edition of Industry Books, the intense work session dedicated to meetings between producers and publishers. “The last edition was very useful, we sold the film rights to the novel by Nicola Lecca, ‘Hotel Borg’ to producer Kees Kasander” claimed Valentina Balzarotti of the Agenzia Letteraria Internazionale. The ten finalists had the chance to present the novels to twenty one Italian and international producers during the course of ninety meetings.
Moving on to the numbers posted by the sixth edition of the International Film Market, a 4% increase in participation was recorded. “I've been coming since the first year and I think things have greatly improved, I have the sensation that there are more buyers and sellers; it has a more international feel about it according to Jose' Michel Buhler, buyer (Agora Films, Switzerland).
820 credited participants which include buyers, sellers, producers, film promotion institutes, directors, Festival programmers, Audiovisual Investment Fund representatives and Film Commissions took part in the five days of the International Rome Film Market | The Business Street which opened on Thursday the 27th and close on the 31st of October.
- 820 credited participants
- 280 buyer
- 93 seller from 61 companies
- 233 producers for TBS & NCN
- 116 films for which 140 screenings were held
- 32 market previews
- 117 titles in the Videolibrary
- 23 workshops / organized events
- 10 Industry Books projects and 90 meeting which took place in one day
- 49 countries represented
The PROJECT FACTORY | NCN
The Project Factory | New Cinema Network (NCN), the co-production Market of the International Rome Film Festival which has come to the end of its sixth edition, has once again proven to be an efficient and informal networking platform where both the projects selected and international producers can hope to find serious opportunities for development and funding.
What's more, New Cinema Network has already laid the foundations this year for collaborations at the service of independent cinema with its most important partners such as the Sundance Institute and Cannes from 2012 onwards, but also with the new collaborations that have recently been set up in 2011 with Sarajevo Cinelink and Rotterdam Cinemart.
The 2011 edition has confirmed and consolidated the number of co-production meetings (950 total co-production meetings over the course of 3 days for an average of 37 meetings per project.
Thanks to the great work done during the previous editions, the Project Factory has established itself within the international film industry and is now recognised as an effective co-production Market. NCN therefore has once again proven its standing as an important appointment in the diaries of medium to large European producers, which took part in great numbers and have already voiced their interest in returning in 2012, thus acknowledging that NCN is an efficient platform through which one can find new projects to invest in as well as worthwhile networking opportunities in the cases where their projects have been selected. From the feedback received one can safely say that at this point producers see NCN as a true "home" where they can return and find new interesting business opportunities, so much so that most of them have already confirmed their presence even before the announcement of next year's project short-list.
Additionally as of 2011 NCN has strengthened its vocation as a workshop as well as a market providing participants in their NCN lab the important opportunity of specialising in film jobs and access to the job market, once again thanks to the support of the Youth Department of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.
EUROIMAGES AND NCN AWARDS
For the second consecutive year, and for subsequent editions, Eurimages - the European Fund of the European Council, recognising New Cinema Network as one of the most important and successful European co-production markets, has granted to the NCN jury - made up of Peter Gustafsson, Rosanna Seregni and Simon de Santiago - the task of assigning the Eurimages Co-production Development Award, a cash prize of 30,000 Euro for the development of the best project presented to the NCN, which complies with the collaboration and co-production criteria which Eurimages stands for.
The Jury has awarded the prize, presented directly by the president of Eurimages Jobst Plog, to the French-Palestinian project OFF FRAME by Mohanad Yaqubi, because,"using a precious and forgotten film heritage, it brings to light the importance of making cinema as a revolutionary tool that can inspire people to fight for change".
In addition to the Eurimages prize, New Cinema Network also assigned its own prize worth 10,000 Euro - allocated by the Fondazione Cinema per Roma - to the best project presented within the Focus Europe project, the NCN section dedicated to European second films, which was assigned to RISING VOICES by Bénédicte Liénard and Mary Jimenez (Belgium),"for a brave, passionate and evenly balanced enquiry into a politically complex and current issue such as emigration which today represents an important and awkward reality for most European Countries". The Jury also decided to assign a Special Mention to PROFONDO NORD by Marco Luca Cattaneo (Italy), with which“it meant to encourage a young and promising author to delve deeper into his interesting and very personal search for his origins”.
The numbers of New Cinema Network 2011
- 950 co-production appointments
- 140 producers
- 29 directors
- 27 projects
- 38 international partners including: Cannes - Cinéfondation, Sundance Institute, Rotterdam Cinemart, Berlinale Co-production Market, Sarajevo Cinelink, Film London Production Finance Market, Screen Institute Beirut, ACE (Atélier du Cinéma Européen), Eurimages.
The Business Street and New Cinema Network are produced by the Fondazione Cinema per Roma, with the support of MEDIA and the Founder members of the Fondazione Cinema per Roma: Rome Council, Lazio Region, Province of Rome, Rome Chamber of Commerce, Fondazione Musica per Roma.
This project was also made possible thanks to the Youth Department of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the Lazio Development Agency, ANICA and private sponsors such as the Hotel Bernini Bristol, headquarters of the Business, and RAI Trade, thanks to which this year's operators could once again take advantage of a digital video library which will be further expanded for the next edition.
