Looking for long term collaboration ahead of us!
Film Arc in Singapore – Blog Entry no 6 by Anne Laurila, Project leader Finland, Film Arc
Chilli grab - Singapore tradition
While Stina has been sitting in her room all nights long writing wonderful blogs for Media platform and keep everyone updated about events in Singapore, I have indeed sat in various meetings and kept sure, that everyone are where they are supposed to be. Although it would have been nice to spend more time in ATF listening to interesting key notes, I can’t complain about the good meetings and negotiations I attend to.
Generally compared to last years country showcase and ATF, it was perhaps a bit less amount of companies participating especially from other South-East Asian countries, but still the event provided a great platform for meetings and networking. Business culture in Singapore is as any other Asian country – very fast, very professional and very direct. It was not a surprise for me that our companies managed to create relatively wide network in a few days. It was not that big surprise either, that companies negotiations took off fast and I believe we will have a next delegation visiting us from Singapore in Kuusamo and perhaps also other Film Arc regions already in January.
Bigger picture behind the collaboration
Since last years visit in Singapore, I’ve actually met more my colleagues from Singapore and South-Korea than my European ones. First we invited them to visit in Kuusamo, Finland, for Film Arc Master Class in March, we met also during Berlinale and Cannes and we had a warm re-union during the Pusan Film Festival in October and now in Asia Media Festival. Discussions about concrete ongoing co-productions are of course one thing in our meetings, but we always seem to end up discussing also about the goals and strategy for our collaboration.
Meetings at OAK3 office
From our perspective, coming from very small countries, it’s inspiring to learn from other countries, how to work towards bigger markets. In terms of population, Singapore and Finland are not that much different, but since the business in Singapore is so international from the very beginning, the whole perspective to do business is different – local markets is seldom enough. Working globally and overseas is not a big deal at all down here, where it seems to be complicated most of the times for Scandinavian companies. For me, it is very clear that Asia is a big and growing market and provides more business opportunities than we would ever get in our local markets. If some of our companies dare to step out from the comfort zone and head towards Asia, potential to get growth for the business will for sure increase.
How MDA is working might be the future also in Europe. Their funding schemes give a lot of room for new innovations and the organization supports in various ways to take content in new platforms and new markets.
Perhaps that is an innovation that we can implement also to our regions in some ways. We have made a mutual agreement of understanding with MDA – to have an official agreement as a foundation for our collaboration.
In the beginning of next year, I will start to rewrite our MEDIA International application to get some extra funding for our collaboration between Europe and South-East Asia. We hope that application and plans for the year 2011-2012 will be ready by April, and MDA and us are able to sign our application during the Cannes Film Festival.
Sometimes you might find a bit time to celebrate as well…
During my career in POEM, I’ve never been able to celebrate Finnish Independence Day (6th of December), since it has collided with Filmkonvent or some other business trip.
Niina and Hock chye in FinPro
This year we were in Singapore, but the embassy was kind enough to invite us for the reception. It was nice to discuss with Finnish people living in Singapore and surprisingly, I met many people from our region. I also met the chairman of the Finnish business council in Singapore and it will be interesting to see, what kind of collaboration we can create with other companies already located in Singapore.
Meeting your old friends and catch up with them, make some new friends, get new ideas and inspiration and take them to concrete action plan, I would say that is more than you would normally get by sitting at your office for one week. I guess next year, when it’s time to plan delegation to ATF and Country show case, we won’t have hard time to get enthusiastic companies to join us!