Costco Connection - April 2008

arts & entertainment

Cinema treasure trove

Film festival selections find a new niche

By David Wight

WATCHING THE ACADEMY Awards play out in late February was satisfying for many fans rooting for a small movie with an independent-film feel competing against four big-budget Hollywood movies. Juno was that underdog, with its virtually unknown star, sophomore director, low budget and a plot line that fails to meet the typical Hollywood 30-second-pitch criterion. It earned an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Juno joins the likes of Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine and My Big Fat Greek Wedding as recent examples of small films with big audience appeal.

But those films all made their mark, and found theatrical release and distribution deals as successful films. What about the myriad of other small films that, though very worthy efforts, have not found similar success?

That thought is exactly what inspired a Seattle company to come up with a smart marketing idea.

“There have been so many great small films. Little Miss Sunshine is a good example, and a great film from Mexico, Like Water for Chocolate, is another,” says Greg James, president and CEO of Topics Entertainment.

James is more than a film fan. He started out as a documentary filmmaker, and founded his company to market videos in the pre-DVD early ’90s before shifting focus to become a successful multimedia publisher.

“A big marketing challenge was always how to put a small film on the shelf in a Costco, sitting next to and competing with the latest Hollywood big-budget blockbuster,” says James. “But then we came up with the idea of putting four good films—each distinguished by film-festival recognition—in one box set, bundled by theme and introduced with a developed line of releases right from the start.”

Regional film festivals have served as excellent springboards for producers of small films. In addition to earning audience support—such as the buzz that propelled

Film Festival Ge ms titles:

Juno from film-festival entry to box-office hit—film producers hope to come away from festivals with the big prize of a distribution deal.

Only a small number achieve that goal, which leaves a large field of excellent films waiting to be discovered but generally inaccessible to the marketplace.

The Film Festival Gems™ series from Topics Entertainment rectifies that problem for its first 20 titles. Each film in the series is a festival selection that has proven itself in front of live audiences. They are presented in four-DVD box sets offered in five themes: foreign, family, war and conflict, documentary and drama.

And gems they are, including Academy Award– nominated Iraq in Fragments, Cannes Film Festival winner Mother of Mine and, from the Tribeca Film Festival, The Party’s Over, a political documentary with Philip Seymour Hoffman. (Titles in all of the box sets are listed in the sidebar, right.)