25/05/2006

Flanders Images’ one-day screening of six recent local features on May 20 at the Star Cinema went off “better than expected,” according to Christian De Schutter, head of Promotion and Communication for the promotional agency of the Flemish Audiovisual Fund (FAF).

“At the end of last year,” explained De Schutter, “we started thinking how we could raise the profile of our films during the Cannes Film Festival and came up with this one-day screening, or ‘festival within the festival’, and selected six films that hadn’t been shown at festivals before.”

These Jan Verheyen’s local hit Gilles, produced by Dirk Impens (over 230,000 admissions in Flanders alone since its release last December), The Only One by Geoffrey Enthoven, Hans Herbots’ Long Weekend, The Intruder and Tangier, both by Frank Van Mechelen, and Love Belongs to Everyone by Hilde Van Mieghem. “The problem with Flemish producers is that they tend to focus on their domestic market, which his rather healthy, and forget about the international one,” continued De Schutter. “We wanted to show them that it’s worth investing in the international side as well”.

The promotional initiative cost Flanders Image approximately €30,000 (almost 10% of their total annual budget), including 50% of the screening costs and the promotion and advertising coordinated by a London-based specialist. The investment was largely worth it for De Schutter, as nearly 15 film professionals (buyers, festival programmers) attended each screening, better than the 7-10 people he had envisaged, and some films were going to be picked up for international sales.

Gilles, Tangiers and The Only One went over particularly well. Next year, the event will once again be held during Cannes, and similar Flemish promotional days could also be organised at other key festivals, focusing on specific territories such as San Sebastian for Latin American buyers or Karlovy Vary for Eastern European buyers.