Galway Film Fleadh Official Website 2006 | Irish Gold Press Release

Did you go to Cannes this year?

If so did you spend half an hour with the following people –
Paul Federbush – Warner’s Independent
Jonathan Zilli – Head of MTV Films Europe
Sarah Lash – IFC Entertainment
Bingham Ray- former Head of United Artists
Paula Mulroe – Bord Scannan na hEireann (the Irish Film Board)
Lucy Conran – Bank of Ireland
Guy Daleidan – Film Fund Luxembourg
Paula Jalfon – Ingenious Media
Eilish Kent – RTÉ
Claire Chapman – Scottish Screen
Jane Grogan – TV3
Brock Norman Brock – UK Film Council
Meinolf Zurhorst – ZDF/ Arte
Peter Garde – Zentropa Productions
Lenny Crooks- Glasgow Film Finance
Kevin Burns – Palisades (Bankers)
Peter Carlton – Film Four

Yes? No?

Maybe you had half an hour with these Sales Companies discussing the international viability of your films –
Axiom Films – Rocio Freire-Bernat
Beyond Films – Stephen Kelliher
Celluloid Dreams – Roman Paul
IAC Films – Michael Ryan
Lightening Entertainment – Richard Guardian
Media Luna - Ida Martins
Moviehouse Entertainment – Gary Phillips
Park Entertainment – Simon Barnes
(Several others were due but they were caught up in the travel problems caused by the London bombings).

No?

If you had gone to the 17th Galway Film Fleadh you could have booked a meeting with each of these people in turn. You could have found out first hand, from some very important players, exactly what they thought of your film(s). You might even have secured development or even better still production finance from any one of them. After all everyone holding meetings are in the marketplace for new films.

There were a further dozen or so distributors and financiers all who have long track records in moving films along to a satisfactory conclusion.

Each of the financiers attending (a somewhat misleading term in my own case) had agreed to undertake these meetings. There were no assistants or secretaries as there are in Cannes fielding appointments. Anyone who booked a meeting was appointed one. The only set back was time. Some of the senior players were so booked up throughout the two days of meetings in the school hall that filmmakers were turned away.

However if you were unable to see them all in a formal structured meeting there was amble opportunity during the five day event to spend time with them all at the opening/ closing night parties, a Media dinner specifically organised to mix producers with financiers in a relaxed atmosphere, a drinks reception hosted by the Irish Film Board for over 100 key people in the Irish Film & TV industry and in various restaurants and bars around one of Ireland most picturesque and charming cities.

Each night everyone congregated at the Rowing Club by the river and later at the Harbour Hotel bar often until five in the morning. Every filmmaker I spoke to had met everyone they had intended to meet and more often than not others who they did not think relevant to their projects but after discussions in Galway realised they had made an excellent contact.

There was also a day of panels on every aspect of the film making process from development through to finance, distribution and sales complete with a case study on the Irish film STUDS.

London based producer Maggie Taylor has been going for five years and considers it the film industries best kept secret. She is baffled as to why more UK producer do not attend. Although she has admitted that she has never conclude a deal there she has made on-going contacts, especially with North Americans that would have been impossible to forge from London or in Cannes.

Another London based producer Kathryn Willens found it small and intimate enough to make it friendly and relatively easy to make connections and network unlike bigger festivals/ markets such as Cannes, Berlin and even Rotterdam.

The cost compared to Cannes is cheaper. For Maggie this years Cannes cost her almost £800 whereas Galway was only £330 for 4 nights for a more productive time.

Almost all my fellow financiers had found projects they wish to find out more about and it a couple of cases wanted to be involved with. I even saw films I would like to distribute. I would be very surprised if anyone left Galway without achieving something positive no matter how small. This is more than be said for some film festivals.

Apart from all the industry events there were an interesting and eclectic range of films on offer to watch at the Town Hall Cinema or the tradis like mobile cinema. I saw some of the best short films in years, one after another.

Then they were the master classes with actors Patricia Clarkson and Campbell Scott, director Luis Mandoki, screenwriter Paul Schrader and an onstage interview with actor Matt Dillon whose directorial debut CITY OF GHOSTS screened in the Festival. Again all of them mixed with the established and would be filmmakers who attended the fair in the hope of advancing their film.

The funniest moment came when I was sitting next to American filmmaker Mystelle Backer at the awards ceremony. She attended by mistake and was saying something like you obviously have to be Irish to win an award only to have her name read out the next second as the winner of the Best Documentary Feature. She did not even know she was nominated.

I kicked myself for not going in previous years. How could I have been so daft?

Can you afford NOT to go next year?

For anyone serious about making a film the Galway Film Fleadh is a must.