Secure site will offer festival and market films as well as Pusan Promotion Plan directors’ previous works.

The Pusan International Film Festival and Asian Film Market will launch their online screening service Sept 6 at http://os.asianfilmmarket.org. From that date, the site will screen previous works from directors participating in this year’s Pusan Promotion Plan (PPP) project market and independent films which have not yet found sales agents. Festival and market films with distributors attached will start screening online from Oct 10. All the uploaded films will be available for streaming until Oct 31, to registered Asian Film Market badge holders only.

“We want to help people make the most of time and cut down on their market screening fees. Pusan is not the first to hold online screenings, but one thing that’s different is that we will also be screening the previous works of directors participating in the PPP. When you go to project markets, there are usually about five well-known directors out of 20 and the rest - it’s hard to find out about the directors aside from their names and profiles in guidebooks before you meet them. So we’ve set this up to fill that need,” said Nam Dong-chul, general manager of the Asian Film Market.

“Also, in the past, we’ve noticed that independent films like Breathless - which was a hit at the festival and went on the Rotterdam, would come to the festival without a sales agent. Breathless got picked up after Pusan, but they missed out on being able to do business at the Asian Film Market. So we’re offering this service to independent films, to be viewed by sales agents before the festival, and then by all market badge holders from Oct 10,” he said.

The uploading service is limited to copyright holders and authorized international distributors. Participants can also check information on who has viewed the films.

As for piracy concerns, Pusan has also set up blocks:

“The site will have a dedicated security service. And it’s a streaming and not downloading site. When a person is viewing a film, their ID will be on the screen, so if anyone tries to capture and copy the images, we will know where the problem started,” added Nam.

 

 

 


 

 

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