IHT, DECEMBER 1, 2005
Wanted: Market for lauded films
By Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop International Herald Tribune

SINGAPORE Plenty of international film festivals around the world give
out awards like candy, often to little-known filmmakers. Yet history has
shown that an award is no guarantee a film will be picked up for
distribution, especially if the film is considered too art-house. The
reality for most Asian films is that apart from occasional Hong Kong
action thrillers and Indian Bollywood films, very few are distributed
outside of Asia. The stakes are even higher for first-time Asian
filmmakers, even within their own region.

The Malaysian film director James Lee's "The Beautiful Washing Machine"
has been touring the international festival circuit for two years,
appearing in no less than 30 festivals, even garnering several prizes at
the Bangkok International Film Festival 2005. Yet the Hong Kong-based
producer Lorna Tee says the film has not been picked up by a distributor
outside of Malaysia and South Korea.

"Maybe something needs to be done to gear some of these festivals more
toward pushing films in front of the eyes of distributors," Tee said.

The new Asian Festival of 1st Films in Singapore, which ended Wednesday
with the crowning of "The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros" (Philippines)
by the director Auraeus Solito as best film, is hoping to bridge the gap
between little-known filmmakers and distributors. "Maximo Oliveros" has
been selected to compete in the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

"The best practical value of this award is the free publicity we get,
because as first-time filmmakers we have no budget to launch a media
campaign," said Raymond Lee, the producer of "Maximo Oliveros."

Of the 22 films and documentaries nominated for awards at this new
festival, a handful had been box-office hits at home and screened at
international film festivals. Yet many, like India box-office hit
"Kaazhcha" (The Offering) or Taiwan's "Dragon Eye Congee - A Dream of
Love," with the Asian star Fann Wong, have yet to be picked for
distribution or screened commercially outside of their native countries.

"In Asia, the market is so diverse. There are thousands of independent
producers making films in all sorts of languages which are, in a sense,
inaccessible to the larger distributors," explained Sanjoy Roy, the
director of the Asian Festival of 1st Films and an award-winning
documentary director himself. Less than 2 percent of Asian films get
distributed outside of Asia, he said.

"The aim is to make sure that good first-time filmmakers can find
distribution," he said. "We cannot guarantee it because no one can
guarantee what a distributor will pick up or not."

The festival organizers have taken a booth in the Asia Film Market
(which began Wednesday and closes Friday in Singapore) to showcase its
movies. "All the information about each film that was nominated has been
sent out to all the distribution companies participating," Roy said.

While film distributors say they're not swayed by awards when selecting
a film, the honors do play an indirect part. "Awards make consumers more
excited," said Kenneth Tan, head of Golden Village, a film distributor
in Singapore. "They don't influence our buying, but they make the
subsequent marketing of the film more interesting."

Eric Khoo, director of "Be With Me," a small art-house film that opened
the Director's Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival this year, says the
Cannes showing helped attract a major international distributor. The
film has since gathered other international awards and has been put
forward by Singapore for an Oscar nomination, a first for the small
city-state. "Be With Me" is also running for the best non-European film
award at the European Film Awards, which will be announced Saturday.

The executive producer Daniel Yun, who has just learned that his latest
Hong Kong gangster film, "One Last Dance," has been picked up by the
Sundance Film Festival, is planning to use the event as a marketing
springboard.

For Roy, the success of the Asian Festival of 1st Films will be measured
by the films' pickup rate: "To be a success, the festival needs to be
credible and to ensure that the films that win have to find mainline
distribution."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/01/style/fmside2.php

 

 

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with kind regards,

Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)

http://www.chinaresource.org
http://www.fluktor.de

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