Variety

Estonia film fest adds industry market

Posted: Sat., Sep. 26, 2009, 2:12pm PT

Tallin Black Nights to feature 48 regional films up for sale

By NICK HOLDSWORTH

Estonia’s Tallinn Black Nights, one of Eastern Europe’s leading winter
film festivals, is adding an industry event to this year’s line-up.

Dubbed the Black Market in a tongue-in-cheek reference to the
reputation that parts of the old Warsaw Bloc have for movie piracy,
the regional cinema and audiovisual market screenings will be a
strictly legitimate opportunity for buyers and sellers to make deals
at a midway point between larger international events, L.A.’s AFM in
early November and Berlin in February.

Devised by festival director Tina Lokk, this year’s Black Market —
which runs Nov. 30-Dec. 3, partially coinciding with established
co-production event the Baltic Event — is being treated as a pilot.

Lokk said the market will feature up to 48 industry screenings mainly
focusing on new films from neighboring regions and smaller film
industry countries: Central and Eastern Europe, Nordic region, Russia
as well as Georgia, Ukraine, Romania, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The traditional Baltic Event, now
organized in cooperation with Black Market Industry Screenings, will
show the newest features from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

"The goal of Black Market Industry Screenings is to enhance
audiovisual cooperation on both sides of the eastern border of the
European Union and Nordic countries and to give filmmakers visibility
and access to the bigger audiovisual markets around the world. The
timing of the screenings and meetings in the beginning of December
will help to summarize the year and prepare for the next one," Lokk
said.

The market overlaps with the Baltic Event where 12 projects from the
Baltic countries, Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe and Russia,
will be presented, she added.

Another new feature of the Tallinn Film Festival (Nov. 27-Dec. 6), is
>From Books to Films, a literary right m neighboring regions that takes
place Nov. 29-30.