With two successful runs under its belt, ScreenSingapore, in partnership with the Southeast Asian Audio-Visual Association (SAAVA), launches the Call for Submissions for its third edition of the Southeast Asian Film Financing (SAFF) Project Market 2017.
Established in the industry as the year’s highlight to look out for, the SAFF Project Market aims to match promising feature-length projects with a global network of media financiers, distributors, and collaborators who can bring these projects to fruition.
Due to the successes of its previous editions, the SAFF Project Market 2017 will replicate its popular structure and feature up to 15 projects, where, in line with the 2017 Singapore Media Festival’s focus on Indonesia, 5 will hail from the world’s fourth largest nation.
2017’s SAFF Project Market will be held at Marina Bay Sands Singapore from 29 November to 1 December 2017, which will include a financing conference and the prestigious Ties That Bind (TTB) cross-cultural Europe/Asia co-producing workshop.
With the end-goal of connecting producers and their promising in-development fiction and non-fiction feature-length projects with commissioners, investors, and co-production partners, this initiative is in line with SAAVA’s mandate to represent regional media investment and facilitate best practices in content producing, financing and distribution in order to promote Southeast Asian creative industries internationally through its members and partnerships.
“We’re happy to come together with our partner organisations in Singapore and Europe to open up the SAFF Project Market once more to producers and filmmakers with regional projects with each edition growing from strength to strength. It gives us all immense pride to see how far some of our alumni and featured projects have come in their financing, production and distribution and we’re excited in continuing to support regional filmmakers in connecting them with funding from all over the world,” said Justin Deimen, Executive Director of SAAVA and Managing Partner of Aurora Media Holdings, one of Southeast Asia’s leading media and entertainment asset incubation, investment and management vehicles, which will once again sponsor the Aurora Producing Award, an SGD20,000 co-production investment towards a project at SAFF Project Market 2017.
“When I was chosen, I was truly excited to be part of a special community of Southeast Asian film producers and also enjoyed the opportunity to meet up with industry decision makers from around the world. To top it off, I was so happy to win the post-production award during the prize ceremony as it gave me confidence that Vietnamese films can indeed have a market internationally when the story is good and that filmmakers approach development and financing responsibly and strategically,” said Trinh Le Minh Hang, General Manager, Skyline Media and Producer of MAMAFIA.
“This initiative allows us to affect change, where without it, makes it almost impossible for industry-wide collaboration, cooperation, and consensus. With this in mind, I am encouraged that ScreenSingapore has become a strong platform for promising minds in filmmaking. This is where international financiers and co-producers within the region work towards a common vision to push projects forward. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. We continue to be pleased with this highly valuable stage in its 3rd year,” said YeowHuiLeng, Senior Project Director of Asia TV Forum & Market and ScreenSingapore.
The selection of the final 15 projects will be made by an esteemed panel of international film industry experts that will include:
Chan Gin Kai – Executive Producer of Silver Media Group / Chairman of the Southeast Asian Audio-Visual Association (SAAVA)
Kristina Trapp – CEO of European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (EAVE)
Marco Mueller – Artistic Director, Pingyao Film Festival
Krishnan Rajagopalan, Founder, Laughing Elephant (and Co-Founder, HOOQ)
Submissions for Southeast Asian Film Financing Project Market will close on August 20, 2017.
