ATF Opens with Attendance Up 25 Percent

SINGAPORE, November 29: The
Asia Television Forum and Asia Film Market & Conference opened in Singapore
today with organizers hailing a 25-percent increase in attendance, with a
record number of participants hailing from 49 countries, including 80
distributors attending for the first time and 50 new buyers.

In opening the event today, Ed
Ng, the president of Reed Exhibitions for Singapore and Malaysia, hailed the
presence of most of the Hollywood majors: NBC Universal International
Television Distribution, Sony Pictures Television International, Buena Vista
International Television, CBS Paramount International Television and Twentieth
Century Fox Television Distribution are all exhibiting this week. Ng also cited
the presence of pavilions from Australia, France, Singapore and Spain, and a
particularly strong representation by Korea. Asian representation in general is
up this year, with 121 distributors from the region participating, a 44 percent
increase.

A highlight of the event thus
far was the Media Financing Forum (MFF), with 38 projects submitted, a 40
percent increase on last year, and 34 short-listed for potential funding. The
two-day forum sees financiers offering up more than $250 million to worthy projects.
“The Asia Media Festival brings together the most creative minds in media with
the acute business acumen of investors,” said Dr. Christopher Chia, the CEO of
the Media Development Authority of Singapore. “Not only is there a 40 percent
increase in the number of projects put up for potential funding at the Media
Financing Forum, the projects are also of a much higher quality with strong
content and potential to reach out to a larger audience compared to last year.”

The MDA, which hosts the annual
Asia Media Festival, is expecting this year’s event to surpass last year’s
record of $33 million in business generated. Much of the business generated so
far has in fact come from the MDA, which announced a flurry of deals today,
including international partnerships with Canada, Italy and Thailand.
“Singapore-made content is rapidly gaining international recognition as we seal
more collaborations and co-production deals,” said the country’s Minister for
Information, Communications & the Arts, Dr. Lee Boon Yang, at this
morning’s opening ceremony. “These deals reflect growing awareness of our
capabilities and the readiness of international producers to work with our
media houses to create high quality exportable media content.”

Among the Singaporean outfits
that has been successful in exporting its content has been Oak 3 Films, which
is producing Love Under the Sign of the Dragon, a TV movie, for German broadcaster ARD. The cast of the film, the
trailer for which was premiered at the opening ceremony, were on hand to
promote the film today at the ATF.