V I D E O • A G E DE C E M B E R 2 0 1 1 14 The good news: The indie movie business is getting healthier. The bad news: The sick patient is now the AFM, which is considered by many observers to be the world’s only marketplace for commercial films. Emblematic of the problems facing AFM is a petition circulating among participants threatening to pull out of the market if it moves from its current location in Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles. If, as the saying goes, “business is business,” the location should matter very little. However, when a market shows signs of erosion, the three rules of real estate usually apply: Location, location, location. The NATPE experience proves that location can make all the difference. For that market, participants threatened to pull out if it did not move from its former Las Vegas location. Eventually, NATPE organizers relented and moved the January event to Miami Beach, Florida, where it’s thriving once again. The fact that AFM is struggling could be detected from an unusual letter that Santa Monica Mayor Richard Bloom gave to all AFM participants in their registration bag, extolling the virtues of his town and hoping that they would return. Santa Monica recently lost the Google office to the Venice section of Los Angeles and surely cannot afford to lose an event as rich as the AFM, which reportedly brings $16 million a year in direct spending to the city. For its part, the AFM is trying to contain increasing cost demands from the Loews Hotel, the market’s key exhibition spot. Escalating hotel costs are becoming an issue for many suitebased markets, to the point that some trade show organizers are even asking the press to print negative stories and reports of participants pulling out. Naturally, for Los Angeles-based companies, exhibiting at the AFM is inexpensive compared to overseas trade shows, and even if a few non-U.S. companies decide to skip the AFM because of the undesirable location, buyers will still flock to the market to scope out American films. Nevertheless, for now the AFM is seen as the only viable international film market, since Berlin is considered an art-house film market and Toronto is mainly a festival with a small, scattered market. On the other hand, the AFM has a good marketplace despite the fact that it takes place late in the calendar year, following the increasingly successful MIPCOM in Cannes and at the end of the budget cycle. In addition, the AFM maintains a different business model for distributors. While MIPCOM is seen as a broadcast market, the AFM is more of an “allrights” market, even playing host to some theatrical business, especially from Russia, as reported by Steve Arroyave of Canada’s Arrow Entertainment. Plus, as The Fremantle Corp’s Irv Holender stated, AFM is a “pick-up and filler market,” meaning that buyers are cherry picking theatrical titles to fill holes in their TV schedules. Others see the AFM as fostering good follow-up negotiations initiated at MIPCOM. However, ACI’s Chevonne O’Shaughnessy pointed out that her company will premiere certain film titles at the AFM but not at MIPCOM, because producers want their movies to be associated with what is perceived as a film market rather than a broadcast market. On top of all this, there is the fact that some movie buyers attend AFM and not MIPCOM. But, even though official figures like to stress that they’re on “par with last year,” the reality is that, this year, distributors were able to get exhibition suites at the Loews Hotel just a few days prior to the market’s opening day on November 2. And even so, a few suites on the second floor of the seven-story Loews Hotel remained empty. This is despite an aggressive marketing campaign that involved the U.S. consulates and embassies in key countries, including Argentina. Perhaps because the AFM is an appointment-only market, the corridors on the various floors were rather empty. But floor traffic has rarely been a virtue of the AFM, especially considering that buyers have to attend screenings as well, with a total of 415 films on the list. The smaller number of buyers from Italy, Spain and Greece, which contributed to the poor floor traffic, was more than compensated for by those from China (up 61 percent from 2010) and Germany (up 38 percent). Plus, Japan, a traditional buyer of movies (more so than TV programs) seems to be recuperating from the disasters of this past March, with the prediction that, ultimately for this year, theatrical losses would total only a small percentage compared to 2010. In addition, the strengthening of the yen against the dollar has improved sales to Japan, to the point that, once again, film imports rank above exports. At AFM, acquisition company TWA alone bought six titles for Japan in the first four days of the market. Other active Asian countries were Thailand, whose government sponsored a Thai Night soiree, and Hong Kong, whose Trade Development Council organized both an umbrella stand for 14 companies and a “Hong Kong Day” on the second day of the market, featuring a series of seminars and a cocktail party. On the seller side, in contrast to the fewer buyers from Spain, there was a large group of exhibitors under the FAPAE umbrella, the Federation of Spanish audiovisual companies. Challenges Are Bread And Butter Of Indie Film Biz A F M R e v i e w RAI Sales’ Bruce Rabinowitz Film Export’s Roberto Di Girolamo (Continued on Page 16) Lobby at the Loews Hotel, AFM headquarters (Photo by Alexandra Wyman/Getty Images for AFM)
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