By Pamela K. Johnson
AFI FEST Daily News

Some people believe Sunset is the Boulevard of Dreams, after all it’s where young Lana Turner was discovered at a drugstore soda fountain—or so legend has it. Others swear by Hollywood Boulevard, where you can be immortalized with a star on the Walk of Fame. But each fall, it’s Santa Monica’s Ocean Avenue, where some people go with their fingers crossed, and leave with their fists pumping in the air: It’s the American Film Market.

It is in the upstairs rooms, and downstairs lobbies and bars of two adjacent Ocean Avenue hotels—the Loews’ Santa Monica Beach Hotel and Le Merigot Beach Hotel—where hundreds of film industry decision makers converge for eight days of meetings, screenings and deal-making. This year’s AFM runs November 4-11.

“Everyone agrees that Hollywood is vital to the moviemaking business,” says Rose Kuo, Artistic Director of AFI FEST. “This is the moviemaking capital of the world, and it’s a great point in the year for the international film community to come to Los Angeles and do one-stop shopping—they can also have a classic film festival experience.”

Indeed, participants come from over 70 countries and include acquisition and development executives, agents, attorneys, directors, distributors, financiers, film commissioners, producers, writers, world press, and others who service the motion picture industry. In the end, representatives of these countries buy movies. Lots of them.

But first they must shop, try films on for size, and flip over the price tag to crunch the numbers.

“This year we have 480 features showing in 31 theaters,” says John Wolf, CEO of the Independent Film & Television Alliance [IFTA], which produces AFM. The IFTA is the trade association of independent producers and film and TV distributors worldwide. AFM attendees buy several hundred million dollars worth of completed projects—or get dibs on films that haven’t even started shooting yet.

In 2004, AFI FEST and AFM joined forces to create the only festival that runs concurrent with a market in North America. But the challenge has always been sprinting from one location to the other—fourteen miles away—on the few days the Market and the Festival overlap. This year’s Festival is October 30 to November 7, and the 4th-7th are the days many industry people desire to be in both places at once.

So for the first time this year, AFI FEST is running its first seven days at the Mann and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, and its remaining two days at the Laemmle 4-Plex in Santa Monica.

“They’re must-see films,” says Kuo. “They have garnered awards on the international festival circuit. We’ve got the stop-motion animation film IN THE ATTIC from the Czech Republic; A TOWN CALLED PANIC from Belgium; the world premiere of AFTER.LIFE with Christina Ricci, who will be in attendance.” Other Festival screenings specific to AFM will include Portugal’s TO DIE LIKE A MAN and the American documentary SWEETGRASS. “We’re very excited about trying out these two days in Santa Monica,” she says, “and we look forward to augmenting our presence there.”

To Wolf, AFM and AFI FEST are symbiotic because the latter provides a marketing platform. “If someone simply has a film playing in one of those 31 theaters that are running simultaneously, that film can get lost. But being a Festival selection gives it added visibility,” he says. It also helps filmmakers strategize:

“If they’re in four or five festivals, they can’t travel to every one of them, throw a party at every one of them, so they’ve got to be selective. If they’re fortunate enough to be picked for AFI FEST, they can leverage their film by bringing their talent to the Festival and to the Market in Santa Monica to create more business opportunities.”

A number of films shown at AFI FEST are represented at AFM, according to Kuo. “And filmmakers who are in the Festival get passes [worth several hundred dollars] to attend the Film Market. This allows them to set up meetings for future projects and to sell to interested territories.”

A festival paired with a market “has dual consumer and industry outreach, and lends a bigger profile to both,” Kuo adds. “To bring the global film industry to Los Angeles yields a cross-pollination that is good for the industry and the cinephiles. We establish ongoing relationships.” It helps people get in the needed “face” time that builds trust and longterm alliances.

Pamela K. Johnson can be emailed at pjohn5@aol.com.