Hollywood Reporter, CA
Jan 30 2007
EFM to screen a record 702 films
By Scott Roxborough
Jan 31, 2007
COLOGNE, Germany — The European Film Market, the industry event that
runs alongside the Berlin International Film Festival, has hit
another high-water mark in terms of attendance and films scheduled to
screen, breaking the record it set last year before the doors have
even opened on this edition.
A total 259 companies from 46 countries will screen 702 films at this
year’s EFM, which runs Feb. 8-16.
Market organizers said Tuesday that 878 buyers have registered to
attend this year’s event, up from 761 last year.
The EFM has expanded its screening capacity to meet the growing
demand, adding three new video studios in the Hotel Marriott on
Potsdamer Platz, in addition to the 31 cinemas used for market
screenings.
The market plans to hit the ground running. EFM director Beki Probst
said that screening rooms on Day 1 of the event already are booked
solid.
The EFM eliminated its in-house cafeteria this year to create more
room for sellers but the market has added an eating venue right
outside the market building, the Martin-Gropius-Bau. The Gropius
Mirror will feature menus designed by award-winning German chef Otto
Geisel and prepared by Martin Scharff and Juergen Koch.
In a separate announcement, the Berlin Festival said that this year’s
Berlinale Camera awards will go to Hungarian filmmaker Marta
Meszaros, Italian documentary director Gianni Mina and the publishers
of German cinema magazine KINO German Film, Dorothea Moritz and Ron
Holloway.
Mina will be honored Sunday, Feb. 11. Following the ceremony there
will be a special screening of the director’s two documentaries about
Cuban leader Fidel Castro: "Cuban Memories: Un Dia Con Fidel" and
"Cuban Memories: Fidel Cuenta El Che."
Meszaros will receive her Berlinale Camera on Tuesday, Feb.13.
Following the ceremony there will be a special screening of her
"Adoption" (1975), the first film by a female director to win
Berlin’s Golden Bear.
The ceremony for Holloway and Moritz will be held Friday, Feb. 16 and
be followed by Holloway’s documentary "Paradjanov — A Requiem,"
about the late Armenian director Sergei Paradjanov.