Network Ireland Television was a participated at the Clermont Ferrand Short Film Festival in France during the first week in February. This is regarded as one of the premiere Short Film Festivals in Europe and buyers for that genre from the main broadcasters in Europe and other territories attend the festival to see the films selected for competition (80 titles in total). The balance of the more than 2,000 entries are then available at the market in a videotek library, for broadcasters and film festival programmers to screen throughout that period of the festival itself. Indeed, many of the buyers whom I met during the week had spent most of their time in the videotek screening solidly from 9am in the morning until 6pm in the evening. The moral of the story here is that, even if your short film entry doesn't get accepted for competition in any of the major festivals, where there is a market attached to such festivals then there is always the chance that your film will ultimately get seen by some of the bigger European broadcasters. However, having a proactive agent is the ultimate solution to the whole sales/marketing dilemma most short film producers face.
Network Ireland Television has pooled and packaged over 60 short film titles and animation pieces over the last three and a half years and has been marketing these successfully to a wide range of international broadcasters. Network Ireland Television currently represent the Short Cuts (21 titles), the Northern Ireland funded Premiere series (10 titles) and the Frameworks animation series (10 titles) for international distribution. One of the Frameworks 2 series, Guy's Dog, was featured in competition at Clermont Ferrand and this was creating quite a bit of interest amongst broadcasters when I arrived at the Market. We are anticipating sales to a wide range of European broadcasters, based on the exposure which this title received during the festival. In addition, we arranged a separate Irish short film screening of 10 titles during the festival week which was very well attended indeed. One of the selectors for the Cannes Film Festival, who is based in Paris, has asked us to send 4 titles to her immediately for consideration for the shorts programme at the Cannes Film Festival in May. We will keep our fingers crossed that we might get at least one title selected for this prestigious festival, which would keep up the tradition of having had a short in the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival since Happy Birthday To Me last year.
In general, the new Frameworks 2 series of animation shorts was very well received at Clermont Ferrand, along with some of the new Short Cuts 4 titles which are already available, particularly Peter Sheridan's The Breakfast, Chris Roche's Chiara and P.J. Dillon's Most Important, starring Colm Meaney. The general perception of international TV short film buyers is that the quality of Irish shorts has dramatically improved in the past 5 years and they are always keen to see what new material is coming from the young writers and directors in this country.
This point was particularly evident by virtue of the fact that, apart from Guy's Dog, there was great word of mouth on Kristin Sheridan's short film Patterns, which ultimately went on to win the top prize on Saturday night of the Grand Prix Award in the International Section. This is the first time since 35-Aside won all 3 major awards at Clermont Ferrand that an Irish short has done this well there. However, this latest award now sets a high standard for Irish short film makers to follow in the future.
Derry O'Brien, Network Ireland Television 18/2/99
