The business of independent motion picture production and distribution - a truly collaborative process - reaches its peak every year at the American Film Market. Over 8,000 industry leaders converge in Santa Monica for eight days of deal-making, screenings, seminars, red carpet premieres, networking and parties. Participants come from over 70 countries and include acquisition and development executives, agents, attorneys, directors, distributors, festival directors, financiers, film commissioners, producers, writers, the world’s press all those who provide services to the motion picture industry.

Founded in 1981, the American Film Market (AFM) has grown steadily to become the premiere global marketplace where Hollywood’s decision-makers and trendsetters all gather under one roof. Unlike a film festival, the AFM is a marketplace where production and distribution deals are closed. In just eight days, more than $800 million in deals will be sealed — on both completed films and those that haven’t started shooting yet — making AFM the must-attend industry event.

The AFM transforms Santa Monica. The Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel and the Le Merigot Beach Hotel are converted into a busy marketplace. All 23 screens on the Santa Monica Promenade and the surrounding community become AFM screening rooms for the entire eight-day event and eight digital and video screening rooms are added just for the AFM. Participants may view more than 900 screenings of approximately 500 films - 31 new films every two hours - the majority of them world or U.S. premieres. Titles range from big budget blockbusters that will be released by the major studios in the U.S., to lower budget art and genre films recognized at international film festivals, all destined for theaters and television around the world.

With 8,000 attendees, 900 screenings, and seminars programmed by leading industry organizations, the American Film Market continues to be the pivotal destination for independent filmmakers and business people from all over the world.

By Lyle Holmes

American Film Market: The Other Hollywood

November 6, 2007 10:56 AM | |

We've got to get in on that...what is it exactly?

FADE IN:


INT. LOEWS SANTA MONICA BEACH HOTEL - DAY


It’s Sunday afternoon about 3:30. A couple hundred industry-types fill the atrium lobby of the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. They gather in groups of two or three or four to discuss the business. The coffee bar does a brisk business, but then so does the lobby bar. Open hallways several floors above look down on the lobby. That’s where the real business gets done, but before I can get up there I have to make it through the tangle in the lobby. I wade into the constant buzz of voices:


PASTY WHITE GUY: I was in the new Denzel movie. I played a gangster… Armand Assante has the most incredible presence. When he walks into a room….


I press forward.


MIDDLE AGED MAN ABOUT THE WOMAN AT HIS SIDE: She could be the new woman on Wisteria Lane…


Further still.


ERNEST TWENTY-SOMETHING: It’s a vampire movie, but there’s no vampires…


They keep coming.


BUSINESSMAN: We’ve got to get in on that…what is it exactly?


More voices. Most I can’t even make out.
Then it hits me. The buzz of voices are Japanese, Korean, German, French. East European. Everyone engaged, it appears, in his or her own spin on the industry.


It’s a perfect stew of Hollywood and business. There are professional suits. Blue jeans, clean with dress shirts. Blue jeans, ripped with t-shirts. Vogue-knockoffs. Leather pants and low cut tops. A cowboy hat for effect. It’s all here.


“Here” is this year’s American Film Market. And it’s my pleasure to bring you the next three days of the largest market for independent movies in the United States. Thousands of buyers, sellers, financiers, and other industry-types from around the world have made their annual pilgrimage to Santa Monica, California in hopes of transacting business.


Welcome to the other Hollywood.


TO BE CONTINUED…

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