Last week, I tweeted out that I had been asked to give a keynote speech at the Cannes Film Festival. In an attempt at humor, I made it sound as if it had been a last minute thing, when in fact I’ve known about it for months. The truth is that I had been approached to help set the stage for a full day event–one in which the MEDIA Program of the European Union would take stock of trends in the film business, with the goal of setting priorities for the future of the program. In any case, here it is. Thanks are due to Tara Roy, one of my Columbia students, who taped it for me.
Ira Deutchman Keynote at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival from Ira Deutchman on Vimeo.
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In the last few days, the folks at Amazon have been a lot more open about their plans to invest in and distribute traditional theatrical films, as well as continuing their successful forays into episodic television. The various interviews and the accompanying analyses underline that fact that for Amazon, the goal is to get consumers hooked on its ecosystem, which bundles content with everything from baby formula and toilet paper deliveries. It reminds me of a story I tell every year in my Business of Film class at Columbia, which goes as follows:
Additionally, many of you may not know that I run a web site called Movie Tweeviews, which is a curated stream of Twitter reviews. When I first started the site four years ago, I just thought it would be fun to pull together quick responses to films in real time, but I wasn’t interested in the mass public. I wanted to limit the stream to people whose opinions I respected. So, I invited some critics, exhibitors, distributors and filmmakers to contribute. These days, the stream is mostly me, but occasionally there are other voices on the site.
Some of you are already aware that I brought 12 of the Columbia University producing students with me to Cannes this year. My goal was to demystify the event, and to give them a ground level tutorial so that if they end up coming back in any capacity, they could hit the ground running. I asked them to write up some of their experiences at the festival, and I’ll share links when they are posted. In the meantime, here is a great shot of the gang at the IFP party.