The VII International Сonference

Film Business: Challenges, Features, Opportunities

The conference has been held annually in Kiev starting from 2008 and is a popular meeting point for film industry professionals from all over the world. This year Film Business Conference was held on September 17 in Radisson Blu Hotel (Kiev, Ukraine). 

In the course of Film Business 2014 several topical workshops were held: Financial Workshop, Producers’ Workshop, Legal Workshop. The new Workshop on animation was presented at the conference this year. More than 20 international experts shared their experience with Film Business 2014 participants. Alexey Trotsyuk (producer, scriptwriter at Yellow, Black & White), Georgy Malkov (Producer of Enjoy Movies), Elliot Grove (producer, Head and founder of Raindance Film Festival), Brigitta Manthey (Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg funding expert), Katriel Schory (Executive Director of the Israel Film Fund), Anna Katchko (independent producer), Natalia Drozd (producer at CTB Film Company), Philipp Illyenko (Head of Ukrainian State Film Agency) and many others were among the experts at the conference. 

Much attention has been traditionally drawn to the state support in different countries and to the work of funds. 

Discussing the aspects of producing commercial films was not the only highlight of Film Business 2014. The topic of art-house/indie and festival film creation and promotion of arthouse films was actively discussed at the conference this year. Film Business 2014 experts explained the difference between art-house/indie and commercial films. All the aspects including financial, legal and producing were mentioned. For instance, Anna Katchko explained how an aspiring filmmaker can find financing in Berlin and get invited to 120 festival without shooting any celebrities in the movie relying on her own experience of tripartite coproduction - "Harmony Lessons". 

In the course of Financial Workshop Brigitta Manthey explained the conference participants the effectiveness of national and regional funds in Germany.

Georgy Malkov and Alexey Trotsyuk highlighted the features of commercial films. 

Philipp Illyenko was talking about the filmmaking opportunities in Ukraine. "We have a budget of 54 millions for 2014, 20 millions of which are already spent on films that are in production at the moment. Money that we have is enough to finish the projects that were started last year. New contracts will not be signed this year. The situation in 2015 will depend on the budget for the next year. Possibly, in 2016 we will have a lot of new releases. There are coproduction projects with Russia and European countries. Overall there are 16 coproduction projects, some are already made and some are still in the process of production". 

Representatives of crowdfunding platforms Planeta.ru and BiggggIdea told about the possibility of involving more people into the film project. If people are interested in a certain project they can be a part of it and help financially, emotionally and intellectually. 

Animation as business is the topic of the new workshop at Film Business 2014. The key speaker of the workshop was French animator Thomas Digard who has a many-years experience in the animation industry. The expert focused his attention on the intricacies of the animation brand formation. Workshop speakers talked in details about all the stages of creating the animation content. They discussed everything beginning with the scheme of building the animation brand and ending with the merchandising.