Chance to sell films in France

Press, 27 April 1983, Page 12

Chance to sell films in France

From

DIANA DEKKER

in London

The three-week programme of New Zealand films now under way at the Cinematheque Francaise (French National Film Library) in Paris gives New Zealand its best-ever chance of breaking into the French film market.

The opening-night reception, with a showing of “Smash Palace," attracted both French distributors and Paris film buffs and critics. A similar season of New Zealand films in London two years ago, and screenings on West German television, put New Zealand films on the map in those two countries.

According to the New Zealand Film Commission marketing director, Mr Lindsay Shelton, in Paris for the opening night, movies from New Zealand have never made a sale in France in spite of sales in 55 other countries. Only the American film, “Battletruck,” shot in New Zealand, has screened in France. It won a prize at France’s Avoriaz festival of fantasy films and went on

to a multiple release in Paris and the provinces. In France, where film is considered an art form on a level with literature, the Cinematheque is both a library keeping a copy of every French film in existence and a cinema offering continuing festivals of lesser-known film.

Its director, Mr Andre Marc Delocque-Fourcaud, said the Cinematheque’s philosophy was to put world cinema on display, like a public art gallery putting on exhibitions of paintings. The season is the most complete exhibition of New Zealand films ever organised out of New Zealand. The 24 showings bring , together almost every significant film made from 1925

on. Some, including “The Scarecrow” and “Smash Palace,” have been subtitled into French at a cost of about $6OOO a time, but most will be shown in English.