SMART7 – a network of European fresh visions and team empowerment

ended

SMART7 is a network of seven European festivals from seven different countries: Poland (New Horizons IFF), Iceland (Reykjavik IFF), Portugal (IndieLisboa IFF), Romania (Transilvania IFF), Spain (FILMADRID IFF), Greece (Thessaloniki IFF) and Lithuania (Vilnius IFF Kino Pavasaris). It connects festivals that share similar objectives and visions, but from different cultural and geopolitical areas of Europe. The network’s objective is to create a field for sharing experience and communication among members by organizing four workshops about programming and audience development, sponsoring and fund raising, promotion and sales, sustainability and green practices. This activity would increase the experience of staff members and, in the long term, improve the organization of network festivals. The project takes full advantage of each member’s strengths and oscillates around educating each other, knowledge-sharing, and bringing the festivals’ teams together. The other objective is establishing a collaborative, coordinated programming activity between the festivals. The effect of this cooperation would be a selection of art-house films (one from each members’ country), which would be presented in dedicated competition sections at all the festivals physically and online in 2023 and 2024. The network will support and promote pan-European distribution of 14 films made by emerging filmmakers with a unique approach to cinema. The network would create an alternative, innovative, extensive and effective circuit of European distribution. The focus would be on films without sales agents from low production capacity countries. The network will also support young audience development activities by engaging university students from all seven countries in jury deliberations. The multidimensional activities proposed by the network will have a visible impact on the European film industry.