NO V E M B E R/ DE C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 “There are countries that prefer action and horror and others that favor romantic comedies. The quality might vary, however.” In any case, help is on the way. At one of the many AFM conferences, it was pointed out that the credit crisis will result in fewer movies being produced — at least for the next five years. The implication here was that companies had better stock up now. Also facing the indies are issues such as companies’ stock prices going down, the credit crunch, the critical financial status of countries like Iceland, the threat of a Screen Actors Guild strike, budget cuts, and the end-of-year budget cycle. The latter is a recurrent end-of the-year syndrome, when acquisition executives run out of money and go to the AFM to shop instead of buy. An acquisition boost is expected at the beginning of 2009, but then it would be NATPE (late January in Las Vegas), the Berlin Film Festival (in Germany in mid-February) and MIP-TV (in Cannes, late March) that would benefit. According to ACI’s George Shamieh, buyers dried up their budgets three months prior to the AFM. However, Chevonne O’Shaughnessy added that at the AFM, ACI completed sales of its miniseries Jack Hunter to TV Azteca, CineCanal, Channel 12 Uruguay and RCTV. And for the company’s success in Latin America, she creditedVideoAge. Similarly, it was said that the better dollar exchange rate is improving nonU.S. distributors’ sales and making locations outside the U.S. more appealing to American producers. At the same time however, the dollar gain “burned” up what was left in non- U.S. buyers’ budgets. As for the buying contingent, according to market organizers, a good number were recorded from Asia, especially Japan. A total of 1,527 buyers were in attendance, 100 fewer than last year. At the obsessive urging of The Business of Film’s editor, Elspeth Tavares, who was insistent that the AFM needed to go paperless in order to become green, AFM’s Wolf explained that, in a survey, buyers clearly prefer paper-based information because they don’t always have the time needed to log onto the Internet while at a market. Prewitt said that her biggest mistake last year was to insist on providing only online information, which ushered in a flood of requests from AFM members asking her assistant to print the information. Also, she added, “We certainly cannot lobby politicians and tell them to log onto our Web site to get the needed data.” On the figures side, a total of 409 companies from 36 countries exhibited at the AFM, a two percent reduction from last year. But total registrants numbered 7,903 — a 5.3 percent decrease from 2007. At the eight-day event, 375 market premieres (films introduced for the first time at the AFM) were screened and 37 films presented at the market were selected for the AFI Fest, which runs as a parallel event in Hollywood. The market also featured 15 seminars and conferences (for which the AFM charged fees), which were held at the Merigot and Fairmont hotels. The former is also the venue that housed companies that could not be accommodated at the adjacent Loews. Several groups took advantage of the AFM to make announcements. From Italy, Andrea Galante introduced a new feature to his Milan International Film Fest, at a launch party held in Santa Monica. The AFM Diary (Continued from page 12) Hollywood producer Seth Willenson, CCI’s Jill Keenleyside MIFF Awards’ Andrea Galante
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