HKIFF Heats Up

world
Euros Optimistic About Filmart
The annual Hong Kong confab has become an essential stop for European dealmakers hoping to crack the
expanding Asian market, but concerns about censorship and piracy remain By Scott Roxborough
For most EuropEan film
sales companies, Hong
Kong’s International Film
& TV Market (Filmart)
used to be a pleasant stop over
between Berlin’s EFM and
Cannes’ Marche du Film – a place
to take a rest from the craziness
of the big markets. There was the
occasional sale but with Japan not
buying much, the Korean market
a notoriously hard sell for Euro
fare and China locked up for all
but the biggest studio-style pictures,
Filmart was an add-on, not
a necessity, for most Euro sales
firms. No longer.
“Last year, the market just
exploded,” says Nicolai Korsgaard
of Danish sales group
TrustNordisk. “I’ve been coming
to Filmart for five years and last
time it was just wow. I sold 12
titles to China alone. My meeting
schedule this year is crazy. I’ve
got two 30 minute slots free, the
rest is already booked solid.”
The explosion of the Chinese
market is the main draw for European
execs taking the 12-hour
long haul flight to Filmart this
year. Box office revenue in Mainland
China grew by around 30 per
cent last year to hit $2.06 billion,
putting the territory just behind
Japan ($2.2 billion) as the thirdlargest
film market in the world.
European firms have been slow
to benefit from the Chinese boom.
China’s official quota limits the
number of foreign films allowed
theatrical release to just 20 a
year – an elite slate of films picked
almost exclusively from U.S.
studio offerings. That’s unlikely to
change even with the addition of 14
so-called premium format (IMAX
and 3-D) titles annually which will
be exempt from the quota. Though
some made-in-Europe 3-D animation
such as Studiocanal’s Tad,
the Lost Explorer or Beta Cinema’s
Come On, Let’s Find a Treasure,
both of which will be screening
6
promos to buyers at Filmart, will
be hoping to squeeze into those
new theatrical slots.
But while the Chinese cinema
market remains tough for European
movies, the television and
VOD business is booming.
“I think we all noticed it around
the AFM last year. Suddenly all
these Chinese companies wanted
to buy content for TV and VOD,”
says Korsgaard.
TrustNordisk’s slate at Filmart
will still be heavy on genre
product — including Icelandic
crime drama Black’s Game,
Danish thriller A Hijacking and
Norwegian action epic Escape –
but Trust will also screen Rúnar
Rúnarsson’s award-winning
drama Volcano, about an elderly
man trying to reconnect with his
estranged family. Korsgaard cites
Lars von Trier’s Melancholia and
David Mackenzie’s Perfect Sense
starring Ewan McGregor as two of
Trust’s solidly art house titles that
TrustNordisk's Filmart slate includes
Runar Runarsson's Volcano,
which won five Icelandic film
awards, including best film.
have found buyers in China.
“The interest, particularly in
VOD, has been astounding,” says
Jo Mühlberger, who runs European
Film Promotion’s umbrella
stand at Filmart. “Last year we
saw buyers looking not just to buy
individual titles, but whole catalogues
of European films. That
hadn’t been there before.”
Dampening the enthusiasm
of some Euro sellers, however,
is the continued rampant piracy
in China.
"If a film cannot pass censorship
to be distributed legitimately
in China then surely, at the
very least, we should expect the
authorities to crack down on the
wide circulation of pirate copies,"
says Charlie Bloye, Chief Executive
of Film Export UK. "We need
to look for breakthroughs in negotiations
at Head of State level to
truly open up China for genuine
trade and cultural exchange."
Don't expect that sort of