Festival gives filmmakers
networking opportunities
By Betty Francis
Special to The Desert
Sun
September 5th, 2004
While the Palm Springs International Festival of Short
Films may seem like just another great entertainment activity
for locals, it’s also a business event for up-and-coming
filmmakers.
And the business in which they’re engaged
today and Monday is the art of the schmooze.
The
festival is set up to provide networking opportunities in its
marketplaces in the Camelot Theatres and the Palm Springs
Mall, where film industry buyers, producers and film festival
directors can view more than 2,000 films on monitors and
provide one-on-one discussion opportunities for filmmakers.
But savvy filmmakers use social gatherings and
bump-intos to button-hole distributors, schmooze with
producers and make networking contacts to further their
careers. Armed with a brief case full of business cards, movie
handbills and winning smiles, they descend upon the many
festival events and parties that put them within stroking
distance of the power brokers. Many have feature screenplays
handy in case a contact looks particularly
promising.
The most enterprising filmmakers throw their
own parties. Seth Kenlon and Arayna Thomas, makers of "The
Nothing Plane," threw a party on the eve of their Saturday
screening with free food and "happy hour-prices" on drinks at
La Casita in Palm Springs. They have a local home, so they
were able to invite local media and videographer Emcye
Edwards, who is making a documentary on the Palm Springs
International Film Festival, in addition to industry people
they knew.
The director and producers of "Ariana"
came from the East and threw a post-screening party for
their film in the Palm Springs Hilton Resort Saturday
night. The star and executive producer, Shashi Balooja,
may not have known the local media, but he managed to
find The Desert Sun building to personally deliver a press
kit.
Other filmmakers found
the industry people at festival-sponsored parties. A young
Australian director, Berry Liberman, needed only to flash her
wide smile to make friends with programmer/promoter Andrew P.
Crane of American Cinemateque at the opening night party at
Las Casuelas Terraza. He promised to view her Jewish-themed
film, "Brothers," the next day.
Two filmmaking sisters
from Australia, Janine Burchett and Cherie Knott, moved in
tandem at that party. They usually stick together and double
team industry contacts, they said, splitting the sales pitch
for their film "Gabriel," which was shown Saturday
night.
Their strategy contrasted from Kenlon and
Thomas. Thomas said they work different areas of a party,
trying to zero in on specific people they want to meet.
"It works for us," she said. "We’ve been showing at
festivals for over three years and have had countless payoffs
from the contacts we make."
One of the "targets"
filmmakers love to spot is local short-film distributor David
Russell. A long-time participant in the festival, Russell said
he hopes to be negotiating for 25 to 30 films by the time the
festival ends.
His company, Big Film Shorts, sells
short films worldwide to markets including theaters, TV, DVDs,
airlines and the Internet.
"The biggest, newest
emerging market is cell phones," he said. It’s the next
evolution from text messaging. Waiting for someone? Flip open
your phone and watch a 10-minute movie.
The festival
prepares a market catalogue listing the producers and
distributors of every film, and hundreds are distributed
through the marketplace. But Thomas said they could be
improved to make networking even easier.
"I wish this
festival would publish a market guide (like the one) at the
Cannes festival, with pictures and titles of everyone
attending," she said. "It makes it so much easier to spot your
target in a crowd."
Betty Francis is a Coachella
Valley-based freelance writer. She can be reached at 341-4080
or e-mail Becha1@aol.com. Bruce Fessier contributed to
this story
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