Clinching partnership deals: Vietnamese filmmakers’ solution
Clinching partnership deals: Vietnamese filmmakers’ solution
16:57' 13/06/2007 (GMT+7)
In a meeting between Vietnamese Phuoc Sang Film and Korean Bily Pictures
VietNamNet Bridge – Domestic film studios are exploring partnership opportunities with Vietnamese and foreign filmmakers. This is considered by some to be a matter of survival in the face of fierce competition with foreign films.
Fifteen years ago, Vietnamese filmmakers didn’t have much access to different film industries in the world.
But since the Vietnamese film market opened its door wider to global integration, more private films studios have come on the scene, and they, as well as state-owned ones, are now active in searching for partnerships.
Recent examples are the Oscar-nominated Buffalo Boy by state-owned Liberation Film and Novak Films from Belgium and 3B Production from France; Golden Kite winner Hanoi Hanoi co-produced by Vietnam Writers’ Association Film and the Yunnan Ethnic Minority Film Studio from China, and the first Vietnamese horror movie in many years, Ms. Muoi by private Phuoc Sang Film and Korea’s Bily Pictures, to name a few.
Working with partners, Vietnamese or otherwise, on promising projects, is sometimes a make-or-break matter for many film studios, including wealthy private ones.
For instance, it was Liberation Film, which once faced closure, which pioneered the search for multi-partner projects. Other major studios like Phuoc Sang and HCM City TV Film Studio (TFS) are also riding on the same track.
Vietnamese filmmakers take partnership projects very seriously, since “investors can’t be joked with”, and joint venture films often involve billions of dong. Yet, making films is just the first phase.
It is also essential to find partners for distributing films in and out of Vietnam as Tran Khai Hoang, Vice President of Megastar Media, a major cinema and entertainment complex business in the country, often emphasises.
Some domestic films have been quick to realise the importance of film distribution. Private Chanh Phuong Film Studio, for example, has signed a deal with Weinstein Company on the distribution of The Rebel in the US.
Another private film company, ViFa, is also counting on its partner CJ Media to distribute Scent of Coriander in the Republic of Korea. And Phuoc Sang has confidently handed over its distribution tasks to experienced Bily Pictures.
Is it likely that working with Vietnamese and foreign partners is a good way to transform the Vietnamese film industry?
In a visit to Vietnam in November 2006, Gregory Frazier, Vice President of the Motion Picture Association of America, said that with the population of 80 million, long history and rich culture, Vietnam had great potentials for making good movies and that American filmmakers were interested in the Vietnamese film industry.
Indeed, an American film delegation with such names as Tom Pollock, Susannah Grant, Curtis Hanson and William Horberg has recently visited Hanoi and HCM City to attend the American Film Week as well as investigate the current state of the Vietnamese market through meetings with Vietnamese filmmakers.
And in a meeting with Liberation Film, William Horberg, The Quiet American’s producer, said Vietnamese producers might speed up their search for American partners with distinctively Vietnamese scripts reproducing unique Vietnamese sceneries.
Though there is still a long way to go for Vietnamese producers, their recent joint venture film projects have indeed pointed to the potential of working together with partners as a way to help make the Vietnamese film sector a “smokeless industry” as the Korean TV film business has become.
