A tumultuous decade has confirmed CineMart's standing in the marketplace, its chief Marit van den Elshout tells Nick Cunningham
“It is imperative that CineMart continues to be self-reflective – we must never sit back and assume that we have found the right working model,” stresses CineMart chief Marit van den Elshout ahead of the 27th edition of the event. “We are always actively re-assessing what we do, constantly working on small innovations, tweaking things within the Rotterdam Lab or working in a different way on project selection. Improving and improving and improving. So in that sense we do change every year, and that's why now we are in such good shape. But at the same time I am happy with the structure. I feel that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water.”
Colloquially referred to by industry types as the mother of co-production markets, this year's event again presents a thorough programme of high-quality industry events with the pitching forum at its core. The Rotterdam Lab will focus its attention on 67 emerging producers, with a series of networking events, industry panels, workshops and speed-dating sessions with some of the international trade's key players. The Dutch Treats programme offers up the best of recent Dutch output for professional scrutiny, while the digitised access-all-areas Video Library is open every day until late, stocked with the majority of films selected for IFFR 2010, as well as back-catalogue offerings from many of the filmmakers in town to pitch their projects.
Diverse projects
This year, 33 diverse and innovative projects represent filmmakers from 32 countries selected from 460 submissions. These include works from established directors such as Alexey Balabanov, whose drama Leather concerns the rapid development of capitalism within post-soviet Russia, Simon Pummell's multi-media Brand New-U and CineMart first-timer Susanna Helke's Malmi Murderaz, a semi-documentary film about a group of boys living in a down-at-heel Helsinki suburb.
Van den Elshout underlines the CineMart principle of sourcing projects which are both artistic and passionate, while meeting the demands of the market. “We know from our producers that CineMart is a very effective place for them to be, to meet with each other, to talk about projects,” she adds. “We are still very open and flexible in our selection, so there is the strongest possibility to find new and very good and diverse projects. We have projects like Island, a South Korean horror, and Bulle de Soleil, a Swiss drama about an obese child who regains his love for life. What's more most of the projects this year have a high level of investment already in place.”
Positive vibe
2010 marks Van den Elshout's tenth CineMart outing, her fifth in charge. It has been, she points out, a decade of fundamental change in terms of the industry's evolving acknowledgment of CineMart's high standing, if not pre-eminence, within the marketplace. “Where last year there was a lot of concern from people about how the credit crisis would affect CineMart, this year things seem to have definitely picked up again and there is a very positive vibe already,” she points out.
“All projects have been heavily requested with meetings: even the ones that might be considered more difficult. This is an interesting sign because, with the current difficulties in getting projects financed, it is more likely for projects from established producers and directors to get a lot of attention. Luckily, the smaller jewels are still attracting a lot of attention at CineMart too. We feel great admiration for the producers trying to get these films off the ground nowadays. They need lots of patience to get their projects financed. Yes, I think that CineMart is very well established. But remember, CineMart is part of the whole synergy of the festival. We are very strong because we are embedded within the festival. CineMart cannot be a stand-alone thing.”
Reappraisals
Two years ago, on the occasion of the festival's 25th anniversary, IFFR staff sat back, took stock and mused on the effectiveness of what they were doing within a radically changing audiovisual landscape. Subsequent reappraisals of the CineMart programme have seen intensive examinations of alternative distribution models and the promotion of more and more ground-breaking multi-platform projects within CineMart selection. This year, IFFR and CineMart is going a stage further, into the increasingly radical areas of production finance, with an instrumental role for the crowd-funding Cinema Reloaded (CR) experiment.
Look to the future
“Cinema Reloaded was something that came from this urge and need for change,” Van den Elshout remembers. “When we celebrated our 25th birthday, we had this big brainstorm when the new people on the horizon, like Lance Weiler [Him, CineMart 2009] and the people from the Dutch production house Submarine, but also people like Simon Field and Keith Griffiths of UK-based Illuminations Films, really got down to discussing this co-production thing and how we at the Rotterdam Film Festival should look to the future and change it.” A theory was postulated that the loyal and smart Rotterdam audience deserved more than an end-user credit, and so the idea for Cinema Reloaded was born – three projects, a voting public and an assurance that at least one of the projects would go into production and be ready for IFFR 2011. The three CR filmmakers can boast very strong CineMart credentials. Alexis Dos Santos will pitch a feature-length extension of his Another World project during CineMart 2010. He also pitched Unmade Beds in 2007, the same year that Pipilotti Rist pitched her Pepperminta. Ho Yuhang came to CineMart in 2006, where he pitched Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.
“Look, we are not re-inventing the wheel with the Cinema Reloaded model, but I think festivals and markets are really taking on a new role and we must continue to research what that role could be,” Van den Elshout asserts. “These three filmmakers are very distinctive in their signatures and backgrounds and they all fit well into the Rotterdam model. The enthusiasm is really there for their projects. It still has to get going, but I think we can really use the momentum of the festival to see how they will evolve, and then see what we can learn from the process.”
More about CineMart here.
More about Cinema Reloaded here.