DEA short report of our impressions
For the seventh time already, the FFKB programming team traveled to Berlin in February to network at the film festival and the European Film Market, to watch films, to request screeners and to meet sponsors and supporters.
The most impressive aspect of the Berlinale is the European Film Market with its almost 10,000 accredited participants. The international industry get-together is a beehive of professionalism pervaded by a rush and murmur of Babel’s size, and for all present a stress test over its entire duration of 9 days. Following a strict pulse, numerous meetings with sales companies take place, catalogs and line ups are presented and browsed, teasers and trailers are watched, projects in different stages of development are pitched. Apart from the meetings, there is also the opportunity to get an overview of current filmmaking or to view the current festival films on the big screen during so-called market screening, which are freely accessible to industry members. The sheer number of high-quality projects that you hear about throughout the day tell of an unrestrained creative energy that pervades the international film industry and gives us great anticipation of the coming years of filmmaking, as well as our future competition programs.
In addition to the search for competition entries for the upcoming edition of Film Festival Kitzbuehel, the stay at the Berlinale also serves as an opportunity to exchange ideas and plan projects and events with FFKB’s partner festivals, supporters and funders. So we visited the meeting of the FIAPF accredited festivals, where ideas for the preservation and expansion of the audience were exchanged and new impulses were given; we met with representatives of our national and regional funding agencies ÖFI, IDM, FFF, Cine Tirol, etc. to discuss and prepare our joint initiative, the “AlpenDating” – Forum for Emerging Producers, for the upcoming edition, and discussed further collaborations between the FFKB and its partner festivals, the Bolzano Film Festival, the Sofia International Film Festival, the Transylvania International Film Festival and the Dominican Global Film Festival.
In the evening existing connections were cultivated and new contacts established during one of the numerous receptions and parties of funding agencies, embassies, casting agencies, filmmakers, production companies and magazines.