It's Showtime

Can the Philadelphia Film Market make this city a true film town?

by Molly Eichel

[ festival ]

Kathilynn Phillips, a Montgomery County filmmaker, wrote, produced and directed her own feature-length film, Chasing the White Dragon. Focusing on six Southern kids who get hooked on crystal meth, the movie was completed for less than $1 million, featured Ryan Kennedy (who is "pretty popular in Canada," says Phillips) and even took home a few awards at film festivals. But Phillips' film remained without a distribution deal — the push it needed to get in front of audiences beyond the film festival circuit.

That's why Phillips rented a booth at the inaugural Philadelphia Film Market (PFM).

Essentially a trade show for filmmakers to show off their wares, PFM lets directors and screenwriters rent booths and screening time to pitch their work to potential distributors and producers. At Phillips' booth, she'll screen clips of Chasing the White Dragon and pitch four other screenplays she's working on. "There are limited opportunities for independent filmmakers to get their films in front of distributors," says Phillips. "We can send en masse DVDs to distributors, but it helps if we can come face to face with them."

In addition to 60 booths and 42 screening slots, filmmakers can mix, mingle and attend panels on anything from the top 50 musical scores in film to how to secure foreign distribution.

"People spend hundreds of thousands of dollars making a film, but they have no conception of what they're going to do with it afterward. That defies reasoning," says PFM's Kevon Glickman. "That's like making cases and cases of tomato sauce without having a deal with the supermarket. But people keep making the sauce. We're matching the tomato sauce makers with the supermarkets."

PFM CEO Tom Ashley is more succinct. "The market is where the business happens," he says.

TLA Releasing (Another Gay Movie, Beautiful Boxer) President Ray Murray plans to attend PFM to scout out talent.

"What I'm looking for is diamonds — watching a lot of films that may not work ... to find that one that does," says Murray. "If we got one film out of this market ... I would consider it a success [for us]."

The idea for PFM came from a meeting between the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival (PIFF) and multimedia production house Invincible Pictures (of which Glickman is president). PIFF wanted Invincible to sponsor their fest, now in its second year. "It's really for your DIY independent filmmaker," says PIFF co-director and PFM CFO Steve Greenbaum. "We don't really see ourselves as a competitor [with Cinefest, the city's largest film festival]. The more, the merrier." But Ashley, who also serves as Invincible's CEO, says he balked at the idea.

"There are thousands of film festivals and we can't support all of them, so I said maybe if ... the film festival had a market attached to it, I would be more interested because that's what I do," says Ashley. "And they said, 'Why don't we?' So we did."

PFM runs in conjunction with the four-day PIFF, which begins June 25 and includes 194 screenings over nine venues. In addition, the winning film in each competitive category — feature, documentary, short and music video — will receive its own distribution deal through Invincible. And, like the festival, PFM's films are open to the public — not just distributors.

In addition to giving filmmakers the opportunity to pitch their work, PFM is also an audition for Philadelphia. Ashley says the market brings in distribution companies from all around the country to "show them what Philadelphia is all about." There is only one other major film market in the U.S. — the American Film Market, which takes place in November in Santa Monica, Calif. The other major markets — at Cannes and Toronto — require a passport to get to.

"I think it's just one of the small pieces that we don't have yet," says Leilani Goode, PIFF co-director and PFM COO, about the market. "We have the big production studio offices, we have a lot of great productions happening here and now we have the market where buyers and sellers can come together and collaborate."

(molly.eichel@citypaper.net)

Philadelphia Film Market | June 22-28, $10 per film, 1600 N. Fifth St., 215-236-2000, philadelphiafilmmarket.com.

Philadelphia Independent Film Festival | June 25-28, $8 per film, various times and venues, philadelphiaindenpendentfilmfestival.com (schedule at piff2009.blogspot.com).