Montreal: Major u.s. movie buyers attending this year’s Montreal World Film Festival Aug. 22 to Sept. 2 admit they don’t have many openings for foreign fare, but both the mega and smaller American distributors point to new u.s. and international specialty movie channels as the best hope for a wider berth for foreign-language film.

For foreign and indie films with the reviews and determination to go the distance, there is also the possibility of a limited platform release, says Northern Arts Entertainment chairman John Lawrence Re, a motion picture distributor based in Williamsburg, Mass.

Re, a former Urban League and e.p.a. activist, says, ‘There are only two ways of releasing films in the u.s. – do wide releases like Miramax and go to 150 screens right away or a studio release with 500 or a 1,000 screens; otherwise, do a platform release where you take a handful of prints, two or three, and work a couple of cities, like Peter Cohn’s Drunks which we’ve released (in association with BMG Independents) exclusively in l.a. and New York.’

‘Art house films only succeed when they get good reviews. The second step is good word of mouth.’

Re says there are about 150 indie cinemas (exhibitors) in the u.s. who carefully track platform and indie releases. For this product, the key indicator is a film’s per-screen dollar average.

‘If you get to a certain threshold then the big movie chains, the multiplexes, will call up and say, `We’ll take it, you can go wide with us now.’ That’s where you can make your real serious money.’

Re says his six-year-old company has ‘angels’ who’ll back it at that level, but the key is finding something that will go to that level.’

Another Northern Arts film with crossover potential is Hearts and Minds, a South African political assassination story co-acquired with Cabin Fever.

‘If Hearts and Minds takes off then we are set and we can go to the local bank, and we have investors in New York and l.a.’

Northern Arts picked up two political thrillers at last year’s wff, Hearts and Minds and Bird of Prey.

Current releases include the Mexican film Midaq Alley and The Search for One-Eye Jimmy, with Chameleon Street, Tokyo Decadence, Raining Stones and Temptation of a Monk in the catalogue.

A filmmaker who decided to distribute his own films, Re says the company’s ‘goal is to build a reputation for quality and be the best truly independent distributor in the States.’

‘If we were to pick up a Canadian film right now it would have to have tremendous critical value, that’s our number one criteria.’

Northern Arts is also interested in cultural film exhibitions and recently created a new label with publisher Naiad Press for the theatrical and home video distribution of lesbian films.

Using a niche-market approach, Northern Arts has chalked up an impressive $750,000 at the box office with Wallace & Gromit, an animation showcase which includes A Close Shave, the British Academy Award-winning short.

Re says he missed the boat when CFP Distribution opened a New York office, but is actively talking to other Montreal-based distributors including Malofilm Distribution and Astral Films.

Northern Arts has an l.a. office headed by president David Mazor and an acquisitions office in London, Eng.

Compliments of HBO

New York-based Jim Byerley, director of film evaluation at Home Box Office, is at wff looking for films that can be licensed for hbo (features, kick-boxing movies, documentaries, series and comedy) as well as for Cinemax, its mainly movie sister service.

While hbo’s primary menu is studio movies, it is looking more for high-end, non-theatrical and straight-to-video material, films like The Last Seduction and Red Rock West, says Byerley. Success on tv led to a theatrical release for both films, he says.

Cinemax typically programs two foreign-language films a month in its Vanguard showcase, which also includes some docs. Byerley says 20 to 25 foreign titles are purchased annually, ‘which is not much.’

Astral Films’ thriller Black List, which pulled in over $1 million at the Quebec box office, is one of the rare Canadian entries on Cinemax’s ’96 rotation.

‘I started coming (to wff) in 1980. It’s like a second home, I really love it,’ says Byerley. ‘I mean I go to a lot of festivals and I’ve found it is one of the most civilized.’

Byerley does not buy, but with staff makes highly detailed written recommendations.

While HBO Pictures in l.a. produces its own miniseries and films (they’re sold theatrically overseas), Byerley says it has largely dropped its prebuying activity, even if prices are higher for completed product.

And because hbo is going around the world with broadcasting operations in Eastern Europe (Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic), South America (HBO Ole) and HBO-Asia, he says that’s another strong reason to see more foreign-language films.

New Line, Fine Line

Paul Federbush, manager of acquisitions and coproduction at New Line Cinema and Fine Line Features, is attending his first wff.

He says he suspects the festival’s film lineup is not potential fare for New Line, but some films could go to Fine Line.

Federbush acquires films for theatrical release, not tv, and sometimes home video. (Fine Line is first and foremost a production entity, he says.)

Recent English-track foreign pics acquired by the company include Shine, picked up at Sundance, and The Quiet Room, screened and purchased at Cannes. Both are Australian movies.

Federbush says foreign-language film fare has been waning in the u.s. (and elsewhere) for many a year and the success of movies like Il Postino (which raked in $19 million – half the u.s. box office for foreign films in 1995) is largely the result of a massive, but not necessarily profitable, Oscar-marketing injection by Miramax.

Faced with the limited back end – in theaters and tv – Federbush says ‘a (foreign) film’s remake potential’ is as important as distribution.

An example, Fine Line picked up the Japanese film Love Letter (at the ’95 Toronto festival) for both distribution and remake. It will have a ‘limited art house’ release with marquee actress Meg Ryan attached to the remake project, says Federbush.

The company may pick up as few as one or two foreign-language titles in any year, with Love Letter the sole acquisition last year.

New Line has a multifaceted business relationship with Alliance Communications. Alliance distributes New Line films in Canada while New Line prebought the David Cronenberg film Crash. It will release it Stateside in late winter or early spring.

Turner, New Line’s parent company, was just acquired by Time-Warner.

ITC/Polygram

Kelley Reynolds, ITC Entertainment Group director of acquisition and development, says ‘since Polygram’s buyout of itc we’ve been focusing more on television.’

There is a message here for filmmakers, she says: ‘Your next feature might be more viable as a movie-of-the-week.

‘Essentially, I think a bad tv movie can be seen by six million people. I think the consistent dollars and the good business can be in television.’

Reynolds’ passion is producing, and in Montreal she’s made several interesting industry contacts with production lawyers and companies like Allegro Films and Astral Communications.

She toured AstralTech’s facilities. ‘It was great to see they’re capable of handling all types of product there,’ she says.

‘I like what you can do in Canada,’ says Reynolds. ‘I think Montreal is a very unique place because of all those great locations.

‘We’re doing a lot of tv movies. In fact, we’re doing one now up in Saskatchewan called Family Blessing with Lynda Carter and Dove Entertainment.

‘There are a number of feature projects we’d like to shoot in Canada with Canadian partners and content,’ she adds.

Current projects include First Degree with Rob Lowe and Toronto’s Norstar and a tv pilot (an information show) with Edmonton’s itv.

Reynolds says ‘foreign-language is really tough,’ but Polygram is backing the French film La Haine (which Reynolds says Jody Foster ‘found’ and is promoting).

A mean-streets story of ethnic Paris, she says the film ‘should earn between $5 million to $10 million in u.s. theaters, but that’s pretty ambitious.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a foreign film on (u.s.) network tv,’ adds Reynolds. ‘Part of it is the audience and the marketplace people won’t watch a foreign film on television.’

u.s. cable prices for these films range from ‘a really low of $5,000 up to $1 million or more for a big-name action film,’ she says.

Cable paid $1 million for The Last Seduction, but foreign fare still mainly goes to theaters, she says. ‘And if you look at the video stores, it just sort of died. Distributors still want to have a foreign film division, but they are really small numbers.’

Massive marketing budgets make it super tough for product to compete with u.s. studio films, ‘but there will be a resurgence for foreign film because of new cable outlets,’ says Reynolds, adding:

‘We (the Americans) know how to distribute films better than anyone else in the world. Disney is the perfect example. They can roll out a film and have it screened tomorrow all over the world, and with a merchandising push behind it.’

It makes more sense to compare foreign fare with u.s. indie films, she says, although ‘hundreds and maybe thousands’ of indie films produced in any one year ‘never get distribution.’

‘I hate to see independent film companies fold. You see a Miramax go and become a Disney and New Line become a Turner.

‘Take October Films, there is someone who will distribute a foreign-language film, let’s hope they survive.’

‘Polygram will be a studio. For all intents and purposes it is a studio, with an independent spirit.

New movie channels

Polygram, Showtime (a Viacom company) and The Sundance Institute are the backers of the all-movie Sundance Channel. The Independent Film Channel is another new cable-movie channel, while Bravo, Showtime and Encore are other likely outlets for foreign and indie fare, says Reynolds.

‘The problem is, I think, if you look at all of America, it’s parochial. You get an occasional breakout film that’s really tremendous, but a lot of films never get seen. I see movies and I think this is really amazing, but I can’t buy it because I have nowhere to place it.’

Roxy Releasing

A regular at the Toronto and Vancouver film festivals, Bill Banning, president of Roxy Releasing, made his first appearance at wff in 1995.

Banning says Montreal will become a permanent part of Roxy’s agenda. ‘It’s an amazingly well-run festival, everything is totally convenient.’

In ’95, Roxy bid unsuccessfully on two wff films, Cold Comfort Farm and Anne Frank Remembered.

The company mainly handles foreign-language, documentaries and u.s. indie films, and also owns a theater in its home market of San Francisco. The video distribution arm was closed but may reopen, says Banning.

Roxy puts out a repertory calendar and also does locked-engagement (a week or two) first-run films, sometimes programming films on ‘a try-out situation.’

A typical Roxy event was a recently sold-out four-day program of films by Werner Herzog with the German filmmaker in attendance.

If a Roxy release works in San Francisco if might then go to a maximum of 200 screens, but availability (‘it’s just a product glut’) is tighter than ever.

New life after cable

Banning says Roxy has had some success releasing films theatrically after they’ve been shown on cable.

(Red Rock West grossed $2.5 million after cable, and Freeway, Anne Frank and Celluloid Closet were also released this way).

‘It’s kind of a new niche. Because of financial reasons, (these films) are sold to cable because people like hbo put up $1.5 million for a premiere.’

Banning says foreign films used to have 5% of the theatrical market but ‘have been co-opted by independent films, and you don’t have the Godards, the Truffauts, the Fellinis, the Bergmans. People used to go to foreign films to kind of find things that weren’t available in American films.’

He says Roxy’s price range for a cable film is from $25,000 to $100,000, ‘but of course if you sell it to some of these newer channels (Sundance, Independent) $25,000 is the high end.’

October Films

Susan Glatzer, director of acquisitions with New York’s October Films, calls Montreal ‘a great place to see a lot of films in a short time.’

Per Glatzer, the u.s. art house circuit is ‘not as good as it used to be,’ but October continues to acquire ‘interesting, edgy’ films from all over the world, including non-English product.

(The company recently signed an all-media output deal for Canada with Malofilm Distribution.)

October releases 12 and more pics annually in theaters with noteworthy results for fare like The Last Seduction and Tous les matins du monde and even higher hopes for new releases such as Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies and David Lynch’s Lost Highway, says Glatzer. One of its rare Canadian releases was the Patricia Rozema film When Night is Falling.

Glatzer says she’s looking for ‘premiere product’ not yet sold in to the u.s.