DOC COLUMN | Doc Filmmakers Guide to the IFP Market

Approaching its 29th incarnation, running from September 16 -19 in downtown New York, the Independent Feature Project's IFP Market has become an important stop for documentary films. Unlike a festival, the Market is intended to give buyers and festival programmers a peek at new work. Through closed screenings, networking meetings like "speed dating" as well as buyer-requested one-on-ones, and a host of typical parties and social opportunities, to the uninitiated, the Market can be, as IFP executive director Michelle Byrd called it, "mystifying."
[ read more in On The Scene ]   [ 2 comments ]   [ filed under Documentary, Lead Story, Markets ]

DISPATCH FROM BRAZIL: One Question, Many Different Answers - FIICAV Asks About the Future of the Brazilian Film Market

Brazil is one of the most well-developed television broadcasting markets in the world, yet its film market has always lagged behind. "We have everything to be a new El Dorado, we can be the best in the world," said Christina Castello, director of the first Feira Internacional da Industria do Cinema e Audiovisual (International Cinema and Audiovisual Industry Fair, or FIICAV). "The market is in a very productive moment." But many of the experts who spoke at the gamut of seminars programmed for the three days of the FIICAV, which took place August 23 - 25 in Sao Paulo and served as a community gathering to discuss the state of cinema in Brazil, were not always so positive in their diagnosis. The survival of Brazilian filmmaking largely depends on government incentives, and politics inevitably enter into an already complicated debate about how to consolidate a market that is vulnerable yet full of potential. Discussion at the FIICAV centered on strategies for the future of their business, while recognizing that the Brazilian film industry needs opportunities for growth.
[ read more in On The Scene ]   [ 0 comments ]   [ filed under Lead Story, Markets, World Cinema ]