After having a blast at SXSW in Austin last week, I'm still trying to catch up with all the news that happened while I was screening and I'll have more about the festival later, but on the business side of things, the Hong Kong Filmart is also underway. It's a giant trade show featuring more than 450 exhibitors and more than 4,000 buyers in attendance, akin to the European Film Market in Berlin (held in February), the Cannes Market (May), and the American Film Market in Los Angeles (November).
Variety is there, of course, and in their special Filmart blog they have a picture of girls in sexy uniforms to show that a Japanese company is "using one of the oldest tricks in the book" to draw attention. Here's why they're using it: Variety ran the photo and wrote about their product! Those old tricks still work. The company is selling some kind of film-related something or other, but the photo makes me not even care what they're selling.
Mark Russell has a couple of interesting blog posts about the pre-event set-up at Korea Pop Wars, while my friend Todd Brown at Twitch has some quick impressions from the floor of the show. I'll be highlighting more individual news items in the next few days. Hong Kong Filmart runs throughs Thursday, March 20.
