Further news from Clermont-Ferrand’s 2016 Short Film Market!
We have had another fantastic day at the 2016 Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Market, one of the world’s largest international short film markets. At 11am Pacific Voice Inc. staff members Aki Isoyama (General Manager) and Jessica Jane Howard (Contents Sales & Acquisitions) gave a presentation about the short film market in Japan at the Forum, a dedicated event space located within the market area.
Pacific Voice Inc., the operations company of Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia, is a distributor of international short films in Japan, as well as a Sales Agent for Japanese shorts overseas. The presentation, which explained the dominance of VOD platforms in the commercial distribution short film content in Japan, was generously attended. Aki Isoyama spoke in particular about the prevalence of smart phone usage in terms of consumption within the Japanese VOD market. She pitched this against the declining figures for computer-based Internet usage, and the continuing increase in mobile device usage across all generations.
Attendees seemed very interested in the nature of these figures and the distinctive way in which the market for short film in Japan is developing. There was an array of questions raised in the Q&A session that followed, with audience members also visiting the booth once the session had ended in order to make more specific inquiries about Pacific Voice Inc. and its business in Japan and overseas.
After numerous meetings with festivals and distributors following the Forum presentation, we finished up the day with our “Happy Hour”, hosted together with Sapporo Short Fest. From 5:30pm we served sake, ume-shu (plum wine), yuzu-shu (citrus wine) and shochu. We complimented these alcohols with a variety of typical Japanese snacks, including osembei (rice crakes), matcha nama-choco (green tea chocolate) and kaki no tane (nuts and rice snacks). Attendees were excited at the selection of drinks and were keen to try each type of alcohol in order to compare the tastes.
Other participating stands included WE ARE FILM UK, which served up gin and tonics, and representative stands for Bulgaria, Quebec (Canada) and Colombia. As with every year, however, it was the Japanese stand that was the first to run out of food and drink. This just goes to show how popular Japanese flavors are! We should say too that among the excitement it was a great opportunity to talk casually about Japanese shorts, and to draw even more attention to Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia and the work we do.
The market will now continue for two more days, until Friday evening, and will be followed by the 2016 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival Award Ceremony on Saturday 13th February. Please be sure to check back in a few days and see who this year’s accolades go to!