LOCARNO INDUSTRY INITIATIVES Step out of the comfort zone


The Locarno Film Festival continues to ramp up its industry activity with special focuses on Eastern Europe and Mexico. Martin Blaney reports


‘‘T


he idea for STEP IN came from people on the ground in Eastern Europe,” says Industry Office


chief Nadia Dresti. Locarno’s latest industry initiative is a forum to discuss new strategies for distribution, exhibi- tion and sales, and will focus on Central and Eastern European distribution and exhibition in its inaugural edition. “We decided that for the first year it


was important to do something about this region after speaking to people like Mira Staleva [Art Fest] from Bulgaria and Jakub Duszynski [Gutek Film] from Poland because the situation there seems to be particularly pressing. “European films are rarely shown in


East European cinemas, but there are the additional problems of cinemas closing down and there being ever fewer arthouse cinemas and fewer distribu- tors buying films for this kind of cin- ema,” says Dresti, who has been encouraged by the “very good response to the new exchange platform”. Major exhibitors and distributors


from the 12 Central and Eastern Euro- pean countries that are now part of the European Union’s MEDIA programme — Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hun- gary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Roma- nia, Slovakia and Slovenia — have been selected in collaboration with CICAE and Europa Distribution to take part in the initiative. It will involve meetings with sales agents (mostly members of Europa International) and a presenta- tion, moderated by Film New Europe general director Anna Franklin, on the state of the market in the region. “A real problem is that the audiences


in these countries have not heard about exciting new European film-makers,” Dresti adds, “so a priority is to see how one can get the audience back.” STEP IN will be part of Locarno’s industry strand, Industry Days (August 4-6), which was launched in 2010 to host buyers-only screenings, previews of fes- tival titles and a co-production event, and will take place in a new venue this


n 12 Screen International August 2012


CARTE BLANCHE


THE SEVEN SELECTED MEXICAN TITLES


n CICLO by Andrea Martinez Crowther


n LAS HORAR MUERTAS by Aaron Fernandez


n LAS LAGRIMAS by Pablo Delgado Sanchez


n LAND OF NOD by Jimena Montemayor Loyo


n MAI MORIRE by Enrique Rivero


n PENUMBRA by Eduardo Villanueva Jimenez


n TAU by Daniel Castro Zimbron


year, the city’s Hotel Ramada La Palma. The festival’s overall budget has


increased in 2012 to $12.3m (CHF12.1m) — from $11.7m (CHF11.5m) in 2011 — boosted by $50,000 (¤40,000) from the European Union’s MEDIA Programme for Industry Office activities. STEP IN’s focus on Central and East-


ern Europe will be carried over into the line-up of the Industry Office’s digital library, in collaboration with Festival Scope. Up to five films that do not have sales agents attached will be chosen by film institutes from Central and Eastern Europe to be included in the library. “This list of films will then be distrib-


uted to the world sales companies so they can screen the titles and possibly pick them up for their catalogues,” says Dresti. The Eastern European presence will


be further boosted by the directors of the region’s leading film festivals coming to Locarno, but Dresti is clear on the festi- val’s stance: “We don’t want to take the place of Eastern European festivals and won’t be holding a co-production mar- ket or showing works in progress. But we do want to illustrate the problems of distribution for European films in these


Guests at the inaugural Carte Blanche event in 2011 (from left) Colombia ambassador Claudia Turbay, Proimagenes Colombia director Claudia Triana and Locarno’s Olivier Pere


countries and the visibility of their films in other markets.” Meanwhile, the second edition of


Locarno’s Carte Blanche (August 6) — an initiative aimed at supporting films in post-production from a specific region — will focus on films from Mex- ico. Seven titles have been selected from 24 works in progress submitted in col- laboration with Imcine, the Mexican Film Institute (see sidebar). Each work will be introduced by the


producer to an audience of interna- tional sales agents and festival pro- grammers attending Industry Days. A jury comprised of three professionals including Edouard Waintrop, artistic director of Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, will choose a film to receive the $10,250 (CHF10,000) prize, sponsored by the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation (SDC) of the Swiss Foreign Ministry. n


s www.screendaily.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20