J-Pitch@Berlin2008

Date: February 8 – 13, 2008
Place: Co-Production Market, Berlin International Film Festival

Project market established by the Berlin International Film Festival. Through its application requirement of 30% of the production budget secured, mostly projects with high completion potential are gathered. Since it is held jointly with the Berlin International Film Festival, the Co-production Market schedules successive meetings with influential European companies.

Overview

Co-Production Market had its 5th anniversary in 2008. It is rather difficult to get selected for Co-production market since out of 35 projects selected 10 projects are from Berlinale Talent Campus. In 2008 ETERNAL FOREST, a J-Pitch project, attracted visitor’s attention as only one project from Asia in spite of crushing European co-production projects. In fact, ETERNAL FOREST had a lot of meetings with powerful companies, using the advantage of a big population of film industry which Berlin International Film Festival collects. Moreover, the pitching training session organized before actual meeting at Co-Production Market was very useful and it helped J-Pitch producers to present the projects with satisfaction despite the fact that one meeting was limited to 30 minutes.

Program

Joint Business meeting hosted by Co-production Market officially.
Pitching seminar & private lesson
-Lecture by Sibylle Kurz
Joint Panel Discussion, speed matching and country table
1. Panel Discussion (three times by round table style)
  ‘Fair Use- Dealing with existing film material’, ‘European Horror Film- Conditions of production and distribution’, ‘Questions to Mr. David Garrett by Summit Entertainment’, ‘Animation & Live Action’, ‘Remakes’
2. Speed Matching (two times)
  Short session in 10 minutes with chances to talk with lots of abroad film industry people
3. Country table (two times)
  Each country had one table and accepted the offer and requests from other country. Canada, Germany, France, Spain, England, U.S.A and Japan jointed.
Joint three seminars hosted by Co-Production Market
1. Case Study - LOVE AND OTHER CRIMES,
  Panorama Special 2008,Berlinale Co-Production Market 2006
  Love And Other Crimes is Stefan Arsenijevic’s first feature, made as a German-Serbian-Austrian-Slovenian co-production. How did the producers manage to finance the film in only half a year’s time?
2. Case Study - HART OF FIRE,
  Berlinale Competition 2008, Berlinale Co-Production Market 2007
  Turning a Best-Selling Book into a Competition Film - and Choosing a Strategy to Sell It.
3. Seminar – Why meet the Americans?
  With Peter Wetherell (Magus Entertainment, USA)