Berlinale Co-Production Market expands...

BERLIN -- The Berlinale Co-Production Market is growing this year.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the event has added five more projects from its inaugural Berlinale Residency, and expanded its Company Matching program that allows internationally active production firms from around the world to introduce themselves to international filmmakers.

The Co-Production Market, which runs Feb. 10-12, will present 38 new feature film projects and seven production companies to 450 potential co-production and financing partners.

Among the projects are four U.S. titles, including James Bolton's "A Secret Life," from Charleville Films and Myriad Pictures, and John Michael Morgan's "The Cavanaughs," from DViant Films.

In addition to the official selection, the Co-Production Market also includes three projects from its Rotterdam-Berlinale Express initiative, among them Matt Porterfield's U.S. title "Sollers Point"; 10 from the Talent Project Market -- a partnership with the fest's Talent Campus educational platform; and five from the Berlinale Residency program, which invites five international filmmakers to Berlin to work on their films.

The Residency's participants include Chile's Matias Bize with "The Memory of Water"; Rebecca Daly of Ireland ("Mammal"); Filipino helmer Raya Martin ("The Empire"); "Soy Negro," from Iranian filmmaker Rafi Pitts; and, from the Netherlands, Sacha Polak with "Zurich."

Among the companies making their introduction are Canada's Foundry Films; French shingle Agat Films; Bossa Nova from Brazil; Egypt's Film Clinic; Friland Produksjon from Norway; Dutch group Lemming Film; and Germany's Rohfilm.

"We would like to create a platform for companies to become acquainted and broaden their horizons -- to go beyond thinking from just one project to the next," said Co-Production Market project director Sonja Heinen.

The Berlinale runs Feb. 7-17.

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H'wood buying up Argentinean titles

H'wood buying up Argentinean titles
By JOHN HOPEWELL

Hollywood's majors have begun an export drive on Argentine pics in return for the studios' bringing movies into Argentina for exhibition there.
Disney has taken select Latin American rights to "All In" from Argentinean helmer Daniel Burman. It has also snapped up animated feature "Selkirk, the Real Robinson Crusoe," an Argentina-Uruguay co-production.

In all, Disney has committed to export five Argentinean films this year, Liliana Mazure, prexy of the Incaa national film board, said at the European Film Market Saturday.

Hollywood's other local operations -- Fox, Sony, Warner Bros. and Universal -- are also expected to acquire four to five Argentinean films for export outside Argentina this year, according to sources.

The majors' export drive on Argentinean pics comes following pressure from the government.

"It is important to export grains, machinery, technology, but it is very important to export our culture, our values," Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner announced at a meeting of Argentinean film professionals and Buenos Aires-based studio execs in early December.

The Argentinean government is aghast at U.S. blockbusters' near-monopoly of screens -- sometimes Hollywood product is playing on nearly 90% of Argentina's screens.

Prior to the December meeting, the government presented execs from Disney, Fox, Sony, Universal and WB with details of 120 films from 40 producers and dozens of TV productions from Dori Media Group, Endemol and Telefe Intl., among others.

The Argentinean governmental demands do not look particularly onerous, however.

On "All In" and "Selkirk," Disney has taken distribution rights to Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru and Ecuador, plus Latin American TV rights.

Theatrical bows outside Argentina will depend on how well the titles perform on home turf, Mazure said.

Burman is one of Argentina's top directors, and "All In," which stars popular Argentine actress Valeria Bertuccelli, is his biggest-budgeted movie to date.

Latin American TV rights are also appreciating, given the demand for Latin American movies from regional pay TV operators.

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Industry News: Film London, BFI Pact to Continue Supporting LUFF

The match up of support for the event comes after the British government opted to shutter the U.K. Film Council next year.

BERLIN -- U.K. sales agents and British film projects alike at the EFM in Berlin got a lift Sunday as it emerged Film London and the British Film Institute had pacted to continue supporting the London U.K. Film Focus (LUFF).
The LUFF, set to make its eighth annual appearance in June this year, invites international buyers to the British capital for four days of schmoozing, deal-making and beauty parading of British movies.
The match up between Film London and the BFI to support the event is a relief for U.K. sales companies who expressed concern that such events would be shelved after the British government opted to shutter the U.K. Film Council next year.
Film London CEO Adrian Wootton said: "There has been much discussion about the U.K.'s production funds continuing and the tax credit remaining in place to support inward investment, so this is a great opportunity for us to tell the international industry that export is still very much a priority for the U.K. Initiatives to ensure British film talent reaches an international audience are extremely important and vital in supporting a huge number of careers and businesses – from the film-makers to the sales agents."
The event also counts support from regular backers the Mayor of London, U.K. Trade & Investment and Film Export U.K.

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Industry News: Hong Kong Film Fund Fuels Foray into Mainland (Berlin)...

In the years before the government-run Hong Kong Film Development Council (FDC) began its operation in 2007, many filmmakers in Hong Kong faced the choice of leaving the industry or leaving the territory. But as the 2010 Chinese box office breaks the billion yuan mark, it's a no-brainer.

Even the business-matching platform Hong Kong and Asia Film Financing Forum is launching a Chinese language script development award for young filmmakers to get a leg up on entering the Chinese market.

"Hong Kong filmmakers have found a foothold in the Chinese market," says Wellington Fung, Secretary-General of the Hong Kong Film Development Council. "Funding is much easier to find compared with four to five years ago."

It's a sea change from the mid 2000s, when local productions, and, more importantly, local financing, dropped to an all-time-low that forced filmmakers to ask the government for help.

During its four-year operation, the FDC has won the appreciation of filmmakers. Its involvement has become a "stamp of quality" of sorts, evident in the 2010 Berlin Crystal Bear winner Echoes of the Rainbow by director-producer-writer team Alex Law and Mabel Cheung, and last summer's surprise indie hit The Breakup Club, both of which FDC-funded. The publicity followed by Echoes' Berlin accolade and subsequent HK$23 million ($3 million) gross helped make FDC the focal point of local filmmakers as a means to attract other investors. And now it seems that many of the filmmakers, whether veteran or young blood, do not even need the government's help.

Since 2007, the Film Development Fund under the FDC has invested almost HK$40 million ($5 million) in 14 film projects out of the HK$300 million ($38.5 million) the government set aside for the film industry. Although projects with more diversified subject matter are getting FDC investment approval, such as 80s hitmaker Wong Jing, whose new comedy Micro Sex Office received HK$1.7 million ($218,000) from the FDC, it's clear that the organization's main objective is not to co-financing local films. HK$104 million ($13.4 million) has been used to subsidize 54 film-related projects, such as the Hong Kong Film Awards, the Asian Film Awards, sponsorships for filmmakers' participation in overseas film festivals, and even short films representing Hong Kong to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Fung estimates that the rest of the fund would be exhausted in the next three years, and the FDC is open to the question of whether to get more from the government to keep the ball rolling.

"What we need is a conceptual shift, from the investor's point of view of gambling on a film's box office, to creating revenue streams in a series of products," Fung explains. "We have to move from a vertical to a horizontal value chain. We can learn to generate revenue from ancillary products, as is the norm in the U.S. and Europe." To that end, FDC is organizing a symposium called Beyond Box Office to be held on March 22 and 23 alongside the Hong Kong Filmart.

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