Another quiet, yet busy, place near the festival centre where accreditted professionals may view screeners from the heavy line up.
Having entered its tenth year, the Doc Market of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival – Images of the 21st Century can pride itself on the course it has pursued so far. An inseparable and invaluable part of the Festival, the market may have started out as a Balkan Market, hosting buyers and films from the Balkans, but it has now become established as a locus where filmmakers from all over the world meet with representatives of TV channels (mostly European, but also American and Asian), with a view to promote and sell their films. With each passing year attendance has increased, proving that Thessaloniki has secured its place as a crossroad for worldwide cultural and commercial transactions.
The Market’s primary goal is, of course, to sell the rights of documentaries for airing by TV channels, but that doesn’t mean that distribution to film theatres or screenings at other Festivals are not an option. But since documentary film distribution is, generally speaking, limited, and because another chief purpose of the Festival’s is to communicate with its audience, the Market functions mainly as a bridge, connecting the cinematic product which is the documentary to the powerful medium of television. Thus, the Market is rendered especially crucial in terms of the dissemination of the genre. And, obviously, the support and promotion of the Greek documentary to nearby or faraway destinations is number one on our list of priorities.
Proof of the Market’s success is the fact that there are more films and more buyers participating this year than ever before. There are over 450 documentaries making up the Market’s offerings, while interested buyers are more than 50.
Even though the results of such an event cannot be made immediately felt, if we had to make certain predictions we might quote some numbers from the past. In and of itself, the 25% of the total number of films that is sold through the Market is considered extremely successful. And if one takes into account the fact that only about 1/4 of the films that form part of the Market belong to the Festival programme, then one can easily conceive the breadth and the potential of the Market.
It is our hope that, this year, even more documentaries will find their way to a television or cinema screen and will succeed in touching the audience that seeks them out.