By Isabelle Giordano of Unifrance
World is moving, faster and faster. People all over the world continue to see movies in theaters, but we can no more ignore the power of Internet. We live in a time where people spend a huge amount of their time online, on blogs, social media and watching films on different platforms.
This is the reason why our duty is to have French films online. For those who don’t live in big cities such as New York, Paris or Tokyo, for those who don’t have access to European culture, MyFrenchFilmFestival is a great opportunity to discover France new talents.
There’s a big appetite for French cinema and all these films can simply not be distributed due to economic reasons. Our goal is to offer visibility during a whole month to this new generation of filmmakers to a broad audience in a different way than a traditional release in theaters.
The 2013 edition was a success, with more than 750,000 viewings in 189 countries and a 25% increase in paid viewings. Countries like China and Canada did exceptionally well.
This is why I am very proud of our 4th edition of my frenchfilmfestival.com : more than 10 features films and 10 shorts are presented in 13 languages in more than 150 countries, thanks to our partnership with iTunes and TV5 Monde Cinema on Demand.
We have also partnered with SpectiCast for the first time to give the festival a theatrical run as well. We feel that bringing this selection of French films to US screens would give our festival more visibility and enhance the cross promotion between theatrical and digital distribution. Films from our selection will be screened in San Francisco, Portland, Fort Lauderdale, Detroit, Napa, Winchester, Fond du Lac, Sahuarita, Bonita Springs.
We are hoping with this festival to shed the light on the new generation of French filmmakers and actors and to give the possibility to US audiences wherever they are to watch these great eclectic stories.
MyFrenchFilmFestival is an initiative of Unifrance Films, an organization whose mission is to promote French cinema abroad.
The 4th edition of MyFrenchFilmFestival will present from January 17th to February 17th a selection of 10 features and 10 shorts on myfrenchfilmfestival.com, iTunes (via Under the Milky Way) and TV5 Monde Cinema on Demand.
To check out the schedule of the theatrical runs, visit http://myfffonscreen.com/
Antonin Peretjatko’s The Rendez-Vous of Déjà Vu selected at MyFrenchFilmFestival will be the closing film of the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look festival in New York on January 19th. For more information: http://www.movingimage.us/visit/calendar/2014/01/19/detail/the-rendez-vous-of-dj-vu-la-fille-du-14-juillet
