23/10/2012 - Europa Distribution's sixth annual conference was held during the 2012 Grand Lyon Film Festival.

Participants at Europa Distribution's sixth annual conference, which brought together around 70 distributors from all over Europe at the Grand Lyon Film Festival, notably discussed the future of the distribution of heritage films.

The five speakers who took part in this debate presented the particularities of their companies in dealing with heritage films, each time emphasising the necessity of digitising these types of films to ensure their better distribution in the future. They were Rodolphe Lerambert from ARDC, Jean-Fabrice Janaudy from Acacias, Elke Bludau from Europe's Finest, Fabien Rigall, the founder of Secret Cinema, and Loic Magneron from Wide Management.

Conference participants also discussed policies set up by the European Union and the future of the MEDIA Programme as part of the project suggested by the "Creative Europe" commission.

Thus, Ignasi Guardans, the director of Cumediae and a strategic advisor to Europa Distribution, discussed the different public policies set up at European Union level: the European Commission's revised 2001 communication on cinema, the impact of digitisation on audiovisual law, the "Creative Europe" report, and finally funding issues linked to the audiovisual sector and distribution.

John Dick from the Education, Audiovisual, and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) then reviewed the MEDIA Programme's support mechanisms from 2007 to 2013, especially its forms of automatic and selective support to films, and its forms of support to international sales agencies involved in distribution. He stressed that the amount of candidates, the amount of distribution deals signed with the EACEA, and the average amount awarded to each film had all increased over the years, which is rather good news for the European distribution sector.

Distributors and sales agents (Sasha Wieser from Europa International, Loic Magneron from Wide Management, and Jakub Dusziynski from Europa Distribution), on the initiative of the latter, then worked on new distribution systems within the framework of the MEDIA Programme. Relations between distributors and sales agents could indeed change when signing deals, as the latter could take on the status of "coordinators".

Consultant Ricardo Torres and Sarah Calderon from The Film Agency then discussed changes in distribution following the advent of new digital platforms, specifically exhibition rights and marketing. Finally, the larger part of the conference ended on Friday afternoon with a discussion about new innovative economic models and new experimental distribution systems, with Thomas Cauchon from Cinema de Facto presenting an initiative called "7ème Salle" (lit. "Seventh screening room"), Ivo Andrle from Aerofilm presenting "Cinema Royal", and Marieke Jonker from AmstelFilm presenting "We want Cinema", before the conference officially ended on Saturday morning with Europa Distribution's General Assembly followed by case studies.

(Translated from French)