Latin America Focus B r a z i l R e p o r t V I D E O • A G E OC T O B E R 2 0 0 7 54 The Forum’s schedule reflected a traditional model: Exhibitors, screenings, conferences and pitching sessions. The event had 32 seminars and 62 speakers featuring producers, distributors and representatives from free-to-air and pay-TV channels, trade associations and government agency representatives. An additional international panel of judges chose the best of 15 pitches in the following categories: Documentary, TV Series and Animation. In the doc category, À Margem do Lixo, about sanitation workers in São Paulo, won the coveted award; Os Buchas, about the effects of women on the young adult male, was rewarded in the TV Series category; and the winning Animation project was Os Abelhudos, about a group of bees acting as doctors. In total, 110 productions were available for viewing by the delegates (representing a 60 percent increase from last year). The majority of those (42) were documentaries. The event’s highlight was an official tribute to Telemundo, the NBC-owned Spanish-language network in the U.S. Foreign delegates were all housed in the same hotel a few minutes away from Centro de Exposicoes Frei Caneca, the convention center where the Forum was held, on the fourth level of a shopping mall. Shuttle busses served the venues, but without a posted schedule and no way to identify the shuttles, many resorted to taking taxis. The convention center was a good trek from the hotel, if one wanted to walk, but the weather was unusually cold with temperatures reaching zero centigrade, often preventing the venture. The two-day affair was sprinkled with coffee and hors-d’oeuvres breaks, but in Granada International’s Flavio Medeiros TPI’s Larry Higgs and Ron Alexander The “Globalization of Ideas” panel with Ricardo Scalamandré and Telefe’s Gonzalo Cilley, among others. Trade Show Success (Continued from Page 52) between the intervals, the widely sought-after coffee was hard to come by. Among the 21 exhibitors were the U.K.’s BBC and Granada, Portugal’s TVI-NBP, Germany’s DW, and, from the U.S., TPI, HBO and Telemundo. Plus, present without booths were companies such as Venezuela’s Venevision and Argentina’s Telefe, in addition to some major Brazilian TV broadcasters, such as Record TV and Bandeirantes (TV Globo, SBT and TV Brasil participated with stands). The next edition of Forum Brasil will take place June 3-5, 2008. Globo’s Raphael Correa, TVI’s José Eduardo Moniz and Telemundo’s Marcos Santana address attendees during a Latin American production seminar BRAZIL HIGHLIGHTS Population 180 million TV Homes 40 million Pay-TV Subscribers 4.2 million National Networks 10 Commercial Broadcasters 283 Educational Broadcasters 164
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