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SARAJEVO 2017 Industry

Avant Premiere Lab at Sarajevo: revitalising cinema

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- The open section of the programme included three discussions centred on the presentation of alternative models of marketing

Avant Premiere Lab at Sarajevo: revitalising cinema
Pari pikule's Hrvoje Pukšec at one of the Avant Premiere Lab talks (© SFF / Obala Art Centar)

One of the newest additions to Sarajevo Film Festival has been the Avant Premiere programme. Celebrating its fourth edition this year, the programme aims to present a sneak peak of upcoming discoveries to regional professionals and audiences. The programme is divided into three major sections that include three Gala premieres – The Books of Knjige: Cases of Justice, Agape and Black Sun – a series of 30 films, sneak peek trailers and screenings. The Avant Premiere Lab section includes both a closed workshop session for distributors and expositors of the region and open sessions for industry professionals.

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The open section of the Avant Premiere Lab included three discussions centred on the presentation of alternative models of marketing and the general presence of cinemas and festivals in a rather competitive, homogeneous and declining market, which demands immediate and radical changes.

The first case study was in collaboration with Europa Cinemas under the title Cinemas as vital artistic, cultural and community hubs with Javier Pachon (CineArte) presenting an example of his cinema in Mallorca, CineCiutat, where a theoretically traditional and mainly arthouse wave of cinema is exploiting the power that social media and new technologies offer in the most effective way, in order to present its audience with specialised and targeted content. As Pachon explained, the key to success is to persuade the viewer to “sacrifice” his quality time at the cinema by offering him value money. By using marketing 3.0 tools and by respecting the user experience and data, the cinema is able to create fragmented but quite well-strategised content based on human connection rather than brand promotion. In order to adapt to new demands, cinema shouldn’t be addressing the customer but should instead build a reliable and realistic relationship that it based on interactive communication. The importance lies with caring and listening without selling. This engagement can offer a real ROI when it is evolved over the right amount of time and with equal amounts of effort.

Nina Peče Grilc also presented the case of Ljubljana’s Kinodvor cinema in the same discussion.Once again it was stressed that today's films are mainly screened outside of cinemas and this inevitably affects the whole film industry chain. It is equally important for cinemas to offer and receive feedback in order to evolve and more importantly extend their collaborations and reach out to a wider audience by developing new habits and thus becoming the cultural trendsetters required by a city or tegion.

With regard to cinema's trend-setting abilities, the following day saw the presentation of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) Live initiative. Melissa van der Schoor, IFFR’s digital content manager, presented the innovative project of having a live film festival expanded simultaneously in 45 cinemas in Europe and abroad. IFFR Live gives an audience who is unable attend the festival the chance to visit a local cinema and be part of the experience by watching the film and by later participating in the Q&A while it is held in Rotterdam. Apart from the apparent exposure to IFFR, this initiative gave independent cinemas the chance to renew their strategy and be part of a global community that offers a unique experience. The same films, six titles last year, are available on different online streaming platforms, although audiences at offline events are becoming more staggered, which is an important piece of data for raising the industry’s awareness on audience expansion and of course offering wider visibility to titles - a reformulation of Even Cinema that has paradoxically only been used so far for theatrical or sporting events.

Finally, Hrvoje Pukšec of Pari Pikule, presented the Secret Arts Cinema event which aims to bring arts together with cinema at the centre. SAC is a thematic event that is held across Croatia in different cities and presents works of art by different artists, expanding to design and architecture in conjunction with film screenings, exhibitions and more importantly interactive content and audience participation.

Regarding the initiative’s third edition, Tina Hajon, Avant Premiere programme coordinator, stated: “I am extremely satisfied with this year’s initiative as we were given the chance to offer an extended programme to professionals. Also, by bringing these open discussions to a wider audience and in combination with our international collaborations, I believe that we are able to offer a new perspective to the regional market.”

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