Eventival

Eventival in London

Adrian Johnson and Tomas Prasek were in London for a week for a series of meetings with the BFI and other film festivals based in London in order to make sure that Eventival will also get a chance to set its light foot in the country in which the company is at home, the United Kingdom. Though the daily life in London was disrupted by the two-day-long tube strike, our meetings went great and we are looking forward to pursuing new festival collaborations.

Eventival at VENTANA SUR

At a reception on 16 May 2009 during the recently finished Cannes International Film Festival, Liliana Mazure (President of INCAA) and Jerome Paillard (Director of Marche du Film) announced the launch of VENTANA SUR, the new film market that will take place in Buenos Aires in Argentina from 27 to 30 November 2009. In his opening speech, Jerome Paillard explained the crucial involvement of the Marche du Film in the event, and also mentioned that Eventival will be one of the two other foreign partners that will be involved in organising the event (the other company is Reelport from Germany that also collaborates with Eventival and Cinando on other film festival related projects). 

Eventival will help streamline the organizational infrastructure of the event, and provide its Eventival software for the film submission, delegate registration, overall hospitality and a number of other services. Ventana Sur (on whose team there are several former colleagues form the Mar del Plata IFF) aims to become the most important film market in Latin America.

The Bergen IFF moves over to EVENTIVAL

Norway's Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF), one of the most prestigious and dynamic film events in Northern Europe and the place where Tomas Prasek's career in the international film festival industry started to take shape nine years ago, has decided last week to switch over from the Datakal Festival Database is has been using since its inception in 2000 to the new festival software created by Eventival. 

Created through the effort of a group of film enthusiasts led by Tor Fosse, and launched on the occasion of the city of Bergen being a European City of Culture, the BIFF showed a great deal of foresight when it decided to place its organizational processes on a single database platform at a time when bigger and long established film festivals were still miles away from a such a conceptual change. Though a film festival will always be distinguished by its artistic vision rather than by the technology it uses and the facility of its operations, it is obvious that choosing the right solutions improves its reputation and enhances its international visibility. It was a great honour and an unforgettable experience to have been there with and for the BIFF in 2000, and it is great to be able to do it again - only this time, as Eventival.

Eventival at the FAR EAST FILM in Udine

A few days ago, Adrian and Dawna joined Tomas for the last few days of the FAR EAST FILM festival in Udine in Northern Italy. The dinner in a restaurant in Seoul where, thanks to the producer Hanna Lee, Tomas first met with Thomas Bertacche and Francesco Novello of the then relatively new and modest event pioneering the Asian cinema, marked the beginning of a great friendship, during the course of which the festival, organized by the CECUDINE foundation, and headed by Sabrina Baracetti, has grown to become Europe's largest festival of popular Asian cinema, and an event sought after Asian cinema enthusiasts from all over the world.

There is nothing quite like the FAR EAST FILM anywhere in the world, based at least on what I have seen in the past ten years of intense festival travel. It survived the initial disbelief of some of Udine's inhabitants, it survived the year plagued by the SARS, it survived the occasionally bad weather, it happily survives the several proclaimed and self-proclaimed crises of the cinema industry in various Asian countries. It is simple and clear - in these hands, the FAR EAST FILM will survive, prosper and grow as long as there are Udine, Far East, and film.