Press release from Strategic Partners
The film world is witnessing the end of an era – and the beginning of a new, and potentially invigorating cycle – according to Michel Reilhac keynote speaker at Strategic Partners 2011.
“It's an exciting opportunity to re-invent ourselves. Challenging and risky as any unchartered territory,” the Head of Cinema at Arte France told select film, television and multi-platform producers from 13 countries who converged on Halifax Sept. 15-18.
Reilhac's message included advice to producers to merge film and gaming, avoid treating films as a product, use the transmedia tools at your disposal, play with various levels of reality and fiction, and embrace the new landscape.
“We are inventing a new language as we learn how to use the new tools of interaction and participation that engage us and the audience in a more complex flow of exchange around our stories,” said Reilhac. “Be a pioneer. Bankers will follow in our footsteps when it is safer and the way is lit.”
The co-production market of the Atlantic Film Festival, Strategic Partners focuses on feature film, television fiction and multi-platform projects
The ideal place to co-produce/co-venture with Canadians, Strategic Partners selected close to 200 delegates from across Canada and around the world, all looking to meet key players, pitch their projects, and expand their knowledge.
Delegates – including producers, financiers, broadcasters, and agency representatives – were also inspired by provocative panel discussions about cutting-edge topics: private equity, brand integration and transmedia.
Keynote speaker Anne Carey, a top US indie producer whose credits include The American with George Clooney, said she was attracted to Strategic Partners, which marked its 14th year on the weekend, by its reputation among respected colleagues
“The experience has been incredibly warm and familial in a way I have never actually seen at a conference like this before – it's been just great,” said Carey (Adventureland, The Savages), whose keynote focused on the importance of partnerships to the film business.
“I definitely feel that there have been concrete connections made, and I feel like I have learned things,” said Carey, who with her business partners were included in Hollywood Reporter's Indie Power 50 in 2007.
Meanwhile, participants in Trans Atlantic Partners, the intensive co-production training and networking program of the Atlantic Film Festival – which kicked off in Berlin in June and continued during Strategic Partners in Halifax – are now on their way to New York for the third and final module, set amidst the IFP Independent Filmmakers Project.