Film Strategy

UN CERTAIN REGARD 2014 Un Certain Regard 2014 presented in competition 20 films hailing from 23 different countries. Seven of the works were first films. The Opening film was  Party Girl  by Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger and Samuel Theis. Under the presidency of Pablo Trapero (director - Argentina), the Jury was comprised of Peter Becker (president of The Criterion Collection - USA), Maria Bonnevie (actress - Norway/Sweden), Géraldine Pailhas (actress - France), Moussa Touré (director - Sénégal).  The Jury was honored and delighted to have been able to view over ten days so many excellent films testifying to the diversity and vitality of filmmaking in the world today. They were also impressed by the vision and originality of the works presented. PRIZE OF UN CERTAIN REGARD FEHÉR ISTEN / WHITE GOD  by Kornél Mundruczó ( trailer ) ( review ) Rights  sold by the Match Factory to multiple territories JURY PRIZE TURIST * / FORCE MAJEURE   by Ruben Östlund  ( traile

ABBAS KIAROSTAMI AND THE JURY ANNOUNCED THE WINNERS OF THE 17 th  CINÉFONDATION SELECTION The Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury headed by Abbas Kiarostami and including Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Noémie Lvovsky, Daniela Thomas and Joachim Trier, has awarded the 2014 Cinéfondation Prizes during a ceremony held in the Buñuel Theatre, followed by the screening of the winning films. The Cinéfondation Selection consisted of 16 student films, chosen out of 1 631 entries coming from 457 film schools around the world. First Prize: SKUNK  directed by Annie Silverstein  ( Facebook ) ( Kickstarter page ) the University of Texas at Austin, USA Second Prize: OH LUCY!  directed by Atsuko Hirayanagi  ( Facebook ) NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia, Singapore Joint Third Prize:  LIEVITO MADRE  directed by Fulvio Risuleo ( trailer ) Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Italy Joint Third Prize:  THE BIGGER PICTURE  directed by Daisy Jacobs ( trailer ) National Film and Television School, Unite

A large part of a distributor's and filmmaker's day is spent considering how to extract that extra bit of attention from the audience to extract that extra dollar.  Hollywood and its counterparts have the time, desire and money to analyze and figure out ways to accomplish that feat (too bad that the efforts to market many times end up better and more creative than the actual film itself but that's another story).    And although many independent, specialty or art filmmakers can't invest the time or money that Hollywood does (many don't even want to), they still learn, adopt and modify what Hollywood does to effectively reach the audience.  That's why I found the new Google white paper, "Quantifying Movie Magic with Google Search" by Reggie Panaligan and Andrea Chen informative.  The paper is meant to sell the importance and value of using Google/Youtube as a search source and its intended target audience are the makers of studio-financed/distribu