Cannes docu-drama
Delegates are divided over Mipdoc's future
Now in its second year, the documentary event was set up to exploit growing worldwide interest in reality-based fare of all sorts. The jury is still out, however, on whether the Riviera rendezvous is a worthwhile addition to the chock-a-block international market calendar.
Its fans, mostly program buyers, welcome the chance to spend more time screening shows. Its critics, mostly distributors, carp that two extra days in Cannes are an unnecessary additional expense that detracts from their sales efforts at the main Mip market, which runs April 12-17.
Rene Peres, the director of organizer Reed Midem's TV division, defends the add-on mini-mart.
"Thematic channels increasingly need factual programs and so do big terrestrial broadcasters which are even putting nonfiction in primetime. We decided the time was right to create a tool for buyers."
Buyers up
The number of buying companies registered to attend is up 14% over last year and will probably top out at 400.
Nancy Walzog, president of New York-based Tapestry Intl., estimates that the factual-fare marketplace has tripled in the past 10 years. Docs, once the domain of pubcasters, now have worldwide staying power because "good storytelling tends to last," Walzog argues.
Other execs add that the arrival of video-on-demand and Internet delivery systems will probably make docs even more attractive to worldwide info-seekers.
At Cannes, buyers have access to 1,000 nonfiction shows in a variety of genres lodged in the Mipdoc library. Buyers then spend two days in private screening booths at the Hotel Martinez, shortlisting and screening key selections without distributors breathing down their necks.
Hungry for product
National Geographic Channel Europe's head of programming, Gisele Burnett, supports the event.
"As a global family of networks we are hungry for product. The extra two days at Mipdoc gives us enough time to screen product that might be appropriate for our channels -- instead of rushing from one 15-minute meeting to the next," she said.
Offering a different perspective, the head of TVNZ's natural history unit, Michael Stedman, countered: "I appreciate that Mipdoc is a chance for buyers to view films unmolested by distributors. But it stretches the friendship between Reed Midem and the distribution community. Mip is already very long -- and two more days doesn't necessarily add any extra value for us."
Stedman's experience tells him that "most natural history buyers have already been quite discerning before they get to market. The danger for distributors is that they may feel a need to go along to Mipdoc in order to avoid missing a trick."
Despite such observations, Reed Midem believes distributors will come to appreciate the value of Mipdoc. "It is also a tool for distributors. By giving buyers extra screening time, we can accelerate transactions at Mip," Reed Midem's Peres said.
And this year there will be an increase of buyers from Asia.
"Territories like Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand can't afford to do much production or co-production because of the economic downturn," Peres said. "So they are looking for docs on the acquisition market."
