| Rio International Film Festival |
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The 10th Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival (Festival do Rio), which is headquartered in the historic heart of the city at the Centro Cultural da Ação da Cidadania, is screening around 350 films from 60 countries at 30 venues across the city. The festival is taking place from Thursday 25 September through Thursday 9 October. Festival do Rio opens on Thursday 25 September with the Latin American premiere of Bruno Barreto’s drama Última Parada 174 (Last Stop 174). The film was selected recently to represent Brazil in the Foreign Language Film category at the 81st Academy Awards, a category its director received an Academy Award nomination for in 1997 for O Que e Isso Companheiro? (Four Days In September). The closing gala screening, on Wednesday 8 October, will be the Latin American premiere of Vicente Amorim’s Good, a UK-German co-production that stars Viggo Mortensen. Amorim and Mortensen will be on hand to attend the screening. Première Brasil: The Best of Brazil Première Brasil, which has as its festival home the historic Odeon Petrobras and Palácio cinemas in downtown Rio de Janeiro, is the competitive heart of Festival do Rio and the best annual global showcase of contemporary Brazilian cinema. In 2008 Première Brasil is screening 64 new Brazilian works. Première Brasil is the only competitive section of Festival do Rio with jury awards to be presented on the festival's closing night, 9 October. Three highly prized audience awards will also be bestowed on the best Brazilian feature film, best documentary and best short film. This year the competition includes eight feature films, ten feature length documentaries (nine of which are having their world premieres), ten short fiction films and four documentary shorts. Rio’s International Reach For the past decade Festival do Rio has been known for bringing the best of international cinema to Brazil, and this year is no exception with more than 60 countries represented across the festival programme by nearly 300 new or historically important films. From its Latin American neighbours, the festival is offering audiences Première Latin America with 20 films from the region receiving their Brazilian premiere throughout the festival. The bulk of the international programming is screening in:
Each year the festival chooses to shine the spotlight on one particular country’s filmmakers. In 2008 the country in focus is the United Kingdom, a country that in 2008 is celebrating 200 years of uninterrupted trade with Brazil. 21 new and recent UK productions are screening during the festival as part of the UK Focus. There is also a separate sidebar of nine films directed by the late Derek Jarman that are complimented by a screening of Isaac Julien’s news documentary Derek. The festival has programmed a number of international sidebars, including sections dedicated to the Taviani bothers; the Mexican director, Arturo Ripstein (who is in Rio to receive a special FIPRESCI award as Latin American of the Year;) Italian Divas; and a special sidebar to mark the centenary of Japanese immigration to Brazil that includes a selection of recent works from the directors Masahiro Kobayashi and Yoji Yamada. Festival do Rio, which first took place in 1999 as a result of the merger of Brazil’s two largest film events, Rio Cine Festival (founded in 1984) and Mostra Banco Nacional do Cinema (founded in 1988), is Brazil and South America's largest film festival and industry event. In 2007 over 300,000 tickets were sold to the Brazilian public and overseas visitors. RioMarket: Industry Focus While a large part of the festival is targeted towards the resident Brazilian public, Festival do Rio also has a very strong industry section, Rio Market (www.riomarket.com.br), with seminars, Master Classes, one-to-one scheduled meetings, and networking events covering both film, home entertainment and television. New for 2008 is the 1st Annual Latin American Feature Film Project. The project is a result of the partnership between Festival do Rio and the Latin American Training Center and aims to discover new talent while creating business opportunities that contribute to the growth of the Latin American film industry. A total of ten projects, selected from across Latin America, will be given an oral pitch to a group of industry professionals on 2 October. The two best projects will receive prizes. RioMarket is taking place from 26 September through 6 October with the majority of industry events centered on the Centro Cultural da Ação da Cidadania. Brazil: The Audiovisual Marketplace Annually Brazil sells more than 93-million cinema tickets, 90% of which are for international productions. Around 350 films are released each year in Brazil of which around 75 will be Brazilian productions. Of the films released in 2006, 145 came from the main Hollywood studios while 119 were independent productions. Of the independent productions 57% were from North America and 34% from Europe. |
