2012 Movies #32-36 - Howling, REC 3, The Great Magician, Electrick Children, Sleepless Night
For the last few days I’ve been in Berlin attending the European Film Market. For people who haven’t attended a film market, it’s an industry convention for international film companies. There are booths and offices where foreign sales companies, national film commissions, and various other entities pitch their product or services to distribution companies and film producers. The three largest film markets are Le Marché du Film (during the Cannes FIlm Festival), the American Film Market, and the European Film Market.
The majority of activity at a film market involves “pre-sales” which refer to licensing distribution rights for a film that hasn’t been made yet and “post-sales” which refer to licensing distribution rights for completed films. For companies to see the finished films, film markets have a series of screenings that’s a bit like a film festival just for film executives. So a foreign distributor will go see a new finished film at a market screening, and then contact the foreign sales company to make an offer. The foreign sales companies also screen promo-reels or have other materials for the films that are in “pre-sales.”
For me, film markets are a great way to catch up with my international film industry colleagues, and to attend market screenings so I can see films early and to educate myself on upcoming foreign filmmakers.
I saw ACE ATTORNEY and WRONG at EFM, but I realized that I probably shouldn’t be blogging my thoughts on what I see at EFM, as these are all films that are currently in the marketplace looking for distribution. Unfortunately I didn’t think about this until after I had already written about ACE ATTORNEY and WRONG, but I decided to just give a simple list of other films I saw at EFM in 2012.
- HOWLING
- REC 3
- THE GREAT MAGICIAN
- ELECTRICK CHILDREN
- SLEEPLESS NIGHT (NUIT BLANCHE)
