04/04/2014 - The industry sidebar of the Vilnius International Film Festival concentrates on the role of festivals

The fifth edition of Meeting Point Vilnius, the industry sidebar of the Vilnius International Film Festival, concluded this week after having welcomed 150 international film-industry guests.

This year, the event paid particular attention to the importance of film festivals in marketing and promoting films to audiences. Nikolaj Nikitin – the man behind the recently launched School of Film Agents (SOFA) – joined Serbian producer Miroslav Mogorovic, Belgrade-based distributor Igor Stankovic and French-Belgian producer Pascal Judelewicz as they discussed the role that festivals can play in marketing, promotion and audience building. Algirdas Ramaska, the executive director of the festival, joined the discussion and highlighted the cross-promotional role that festivals can play in cooperating with distributors of films that have screened at festivals.

Aside from the focus on festivals, there was a chance to learn about new projects from the area, as Baltic producers and directors presented 16 Lithuanian feature and documentary projects, as well as three Latvian and three Estonian ones. These included: the documentary Our Africa, a glimpse into post-WWII Soviet neo-colonialism in Africa, when the USSR filled the western power vacuum in countries such as Liberia, Kenya, Mozambique and Kenya with offers of “fraternal, communistic help”, which draws on rarely seen Soviet archive footage from the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s; completed arthouse/commercial crossover feature Gitel, directed by Robert Mullan, the story of a young Jewish woman's post-war “Holocaust survivor guilt”; and Estonia's coming-of-age feature Cherry Tobacco. All of these productions clearly demonstrated the creative force of the Baltic region.

The event also included a Lithuanian-language discussion for local producers on legal issues in the film industry.