| Market Pitches New Tent | |
| Out in the new MIF Pavillion, the tent city into which a good number
of Market companies have been relocated this year, they were working on
it. The staple-guns were in action, and Justina Bastos of Portugal's ICAM
was standing in front of her immaculate new stand which would have been
much helped by some promotional material (this was still in Lisbon, or
possibly in mid-air).
The Holland Film stand was cunningly disguised as a Friesian cow, a piece of corporate branding which apparently has nothing to do with the fact that this year's two main Dutch films, The Polish Bride and Little Tony, both have rural themes. "It's a great location," said Holland Film ceo Claudia Landsberger, whose stand is right by the tent's main entrance. General consensus among the European sales organisations setting up shop in the Pavillion was that it was going to offer better drop-by potential than the cul-de-sac in which they were stuck last year. As the Austrian Film Commission's Martin Schweighofer summed it up: "It's certainly no worse." Voula Georgakakou of the Greek Film Centre spread her hands in agreement. Rare praise indeed on the first day of a film market. The 1998 statistics are certainly impressive: 4,255 people from 1,421 companies in 71 countries had registered by opening day and the accreditation procedures seemed to be going smoothly and good-naturedly. 5,000 participants are expected to have signed up by Market's end. For collectors of statistics, the US has the most films in the Market
- 152, just over a third of them premieres - and the most participants
(21% of the total), followed by France (87 films; 15% of the body-count),
the UK (48 films and 10%) and Germany, with 32 films and 8%.
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