Project South Korea - pitching in Hong Kong
Chronicle by Janne Niskala, Producer at Vaski Filmi.
The warm cities of Busan and Seoul with their ongoing buzz have changed into a small snowy towns of Posio and Oulu. Lot of things has happened since the last blog entry. To make a long story short, during the Pusan Film Festival I met a Korean producer, Min-Chul Kim from CreativEast, who also has own projects concerning Finland.
So the co-production collaboration seems to born in a very natural way. Also it helps that we are same style of fellows, so friendship did bloom quite quickly. Min-Chul is a rising star as a documentary producer in South-Korea. The Film he was representing in IDFA, Iron Crows, won the Best Mid-Length Documentary competition. It's a first Korean documentary to win in IDFA competition series! The film is about ship wrecking industry in Bangladesh, where most of our ships too(!) are dismantled in a poor conditions. Great film, I recommend it for everyone to see.
Not only that, but when money from Seoul Film Commission started to fly in from the doors, things got really interesting. Subsidies of 20%, lot of different kind of crew possibilities with great track record and fast and versatile reaction from the local producers side offer at least for my project best possible scenario. Now I'm looking ways to fund my production here in Finland. Most of the funding is still in negotiation, but I believe that this is a film worth fighting for.
Next step for us is to go to the Asian Side of the Doc in Hong Kong in March with Min-Chul's project Planet of Snail. We are looking for the rest of the financing for the Film. It has already been in couple of pitching sessions (Sheffield, EIDF[a major Korean documentary film festival]) and has some funding in place. The negotiations with Finnish decision makers are beginning near future.
It's a nice that Hong Kong International Film Festival is opening at the same time. I'll try to crash the opening party (but I little bit doubt if I'm going to make it...). The only downside of the trip is the schedule. It means that I can't see all of you in Skellefteå Master Class, I'll have to settle for Hong Kong for this time.
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Janne Niskala,
Producer
