MONTREAL – As part of a new campaign to find and promote emerging talent in Canadian cinema, Telefilm Canada has announced it is supporting a new Vancouver-based, reality-show style competition to provide a million dollars to fund a new feature film.
Telefilm made the announcement Sunday during its Talent To Watch event at the Cannes Film Festival, where it introduced Brad Pelman, president of distribution and sales of the CineCoup Film Accelerator, to industry players.
The CineCoup Film Accelerator is a unique model for indie filmmakers to develop, market and finance their feature films. Filmmaking teams apply to CineCoup with a two-minute trailer then advance through a game-show style selection process that promotes their projects and builds fan support through social media.
Film fans watch, weigh in and earn votes to help their favourite filmmakers advance. The top ten projects have now been optioned for development. Telefilm and CineCoup will unveil the top five films at the Banff World Media Festival in June. Ultimately one project will be selected for up to $1 million in production financing and guaranteed theatrical release in Cineplex theatres in January 2014.
“We’re constantly innovating in our quest to find and encourage emerging talent,” said Carolle Brabant, Telefilm’s executive director, in a release. “But to do this, we rely on partners who share our passion for cinema and who want to push the boundaries of development, production, distribution and marketing.”
More information on Cinecoup’s top 10 submissions can be found at www.cinecoup.com/showcase.
