Amid large scale festival, a place for the upstarts

by Eric Kohn


CANNES, France -- While most conventional festivals lump shorts together in a few programs or screen them before features, the Cannes Film Festival has a wide variety of significant venues for practitioners of the form. The main program has one major slot for competition shorts, made up of nine titles, but there are many more entry points available. Financed by the National Cinema Centre and the city of Paris, the Cinefondation program, which launched ten years ago, focuses on new talent by selecting around twenty short works from film schools around the globe. Not everyone needs such niceties, however, and that's where the marketplace comes in.

A dense outlet for members of the industry both large and small, the Marche du Film, a staple of the gathering since 1959, functions as the world's largest domain in the world for film buyers. Roaming booths throughout the main building, sales agents can reach most international territories and plug into the community with unparalleled access. Rather than just handing it off to a seller, however, filmmakers have the opportunity to bring their shorts to the Short Film Corner, which announced a partnership with Withoutabox last year. By registering a short, filmmakers can set up shop in the Corner with their work, participating in various workshops and panels while gaining exposure and talking to potential buyers.

A microcosm of the independent film world, the Corner is a welcome alternative to the blaring celebrity-driven fanfare taking place right next door at the Palais des Festivals. "Cannes is an interestingly weird experience," said Larelle Bossi, director of the experimental short Ring Around the Rose, part of the Corner this year. "Never having experienced it or another market or festival before, I was at first confused and almost intimidated by the characters that it attracts. However, I've begun to realize that it's simply an expo of fellow lovers of film. Like them, I have something to offer and [something to] learn." A marvelously shot seven-minute exploration of dark sexual fantasies, Rosie suggests Bossi has a promising career ahead for her. "My first short film is merely the first step into my career as a filmmaker," she explained. "It has shown me where I begin this journey and where I can potentially strive to be within a timeline I create for myself."

It's no secret that short films often work as gateways to features, but Cannes creates a unique opportunity for self-promotion while providing a window into the other extremes of the business. "The Corner really is great for making small-time indies feel like they have a home here," said Nadia Garnier, director of the Corner entry Cuidado. "This already has been the experience of a lifetime. I've walked the red carpet for three premieres in two days." But that doesn't mean she has sworn off her current mode of expression. "I could do a feature on my own, but would be very hard," she said. "I will still make shorts no matter what. They're a great way to get a message to the audience quickly and simply."

Sometimes, however, the message isn't so quick or simple. Fictitious Films, a production company geared toward making socially-relevant films that launched last year, got a booth in the market with the specific intention of building funds for a feature-length version of Shades of Hope, writer-director Brianna Campbell's painstakingly rendered take on three Vietnam veterans' wartime experiences. Campbell, the president of Fictitious Films, said the experience has been overwhelmingly positive. "We've made a lot of contacts, met really amazing people and have learned a lot of about the process of buying, selling and securing financing," she mentioned. "Our goal at Cannes was to establish Fictitious Films as a serious production company with interesting projects investors would recognize as worthy of funding."

In most cases, it's a question of finding the right hook to grab buyers' attention. Tony Mohareb, another filmmaker with a short at the Cannes market, August 5, which he hopes will help him get money for a feature, can sum up his intentions with ease. "Ultimately, the reason I made the film to begin with was to bring attention to another side of the conflict, a side most often ignored or looked over," he said of the film, which follows an angry Middle Eastern man exploring his desecrated home in the wake of last year's bomb-riddled conflict between Israel and its neighbors to the north. "Coming to Cannes was a great opportunity. It gave me the chance to network with industry professionals from all over the world. The market immersion opportunities in Cannes for young filmmakers is unparalleled."

*image2*All of which make it a far cry from the facile antics of viral videos and online episodes. On a panel at the Corner on Sunday afternoon entitled "Short Films on the Internet — Which Economic Model Works?" several new media pioneers discussed the possibilities provided by the internet for filmmakers involved in the shorts game. Stephane Le Viet, co-founder of the French online short film platform 6EMA.com, rejected the immediate relevance of YouTube phenomena like lonelygirl15. "It's hard to place that in the context of short films," he said. "It's a really, really efficient marketing phenomenon, but I don't know if there's any lesson to be learned." Meanwhile, Power to the Pixel founder and Wonderland Advisory Board chair Liz Rosenthal laid out the context. "Films have become calling cards," she said. "You have to think about who your audience is and how you're going to reach them." It's safe to say that at least one possibility comes along each year in the south of France.