Ireland Selected as Canada’s Strategic Partners Spotlight
Ireland will be featured as a spotlight country, alongside Germany, at the 2009 Atlantic Film Festival / Strategic Partners taking place in Halifax, Nova Scotia in September.
Strategic Partners, Canada's singular international co-production market for film and television projects, focuses on international movies from across the globe, with a special stream of films from the chosen spotlight countries, Ireland and Germany. The event brings together up to 200 delegates from around the world with Canada's film and television players at it's co-production market, a network for those with productions at an early stage and looking for the right partner, and covers all genres of film and television.
Jan Miller, the Director of Strategic Partners said that Ireland and Germany were natural choices to spotlight for 2009 as they are "two markets that are continually investing in their own film industries and cultivating co-production on the world stage. In 2008, producers attending SP reported 66 film and television projects benefited significantly from attending Strategic Partners. We can't wait to see the results from this year's event with our spotlight delegations drawing delegates from around the world to do co-production business."
Current Irish-Canadian co-productions include the award winning television series The Tudors, which is funded by the IFB and produced by World 2000 Entertainment. Love and Savagery, another IFB funded co-production between Subotica Entertainment and Canada's Morag Loves Company, arose from Strategic Partner's '04. The Irish government recently announced additional measures to strengthen the industry, including competitive tax incentives. These incentives are easily accessible to co-production partners furthering Ireland as a competitive location in international film and television production.
The 12th annual Strategic Partners runs from September 18-20, 2009 as part of the 29th Atlantic Film Festival.