From February 2nd – 9th, we attend the biggest, most influential short film market in the world, Clermont Ferrand.  Our role there, with the support of Culture Ireland, is to promote new Irish shorts of quality.

Mick Hannigan, Festival Director, at the Cork Film Festival promoting Irish Short Film stand at the Clermont Ferrand Short Film Market.

Clermont-Ferrand is the Cannes of short film. It is the single most important market for short film in the world, and also one of the most prestigious short film festivals. It is attended by programmers of the major short film festivals, by short film agencies, by buyers and distributors.

Cork has had a long association with the Clermont-Ferrand festival since we assisted them with the first major International retrospective of Irish short films in 1996. Cork Film Festival has been present at most of the festivals since then and in 2007 we hosted the first ever Irish stand in the Short Film Market.

This was a logical development of the promotional and advocacy work Cork has being doing for many years - advising on and curating Irish short film programmes for international festivals, brokering a Ken Wardrop retrospective at the Nordisk Panorama and so forth.

Our activities at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Market last year directly resulted in quality Irish shorts being brought to the attention of curators and programmers, with many subsequently being invited to participate in international festivals. In particular, the National Film School was featured at the World Wide Shorts Festival in Toronto in 2007.

Suzanne Keane of the Irish Film Board with Mick Hannigan, Festival Director and Una Feely, Senior Festival Programmer of the 53rd Corona Cork Film Festival.	Conor Ferguson, Director of The Wednesdays, which won the International Audience Award, with Fran Keaveney of the Irish Film Board; at the Corona Cork Film Festival reception at Clermont Ferrand.
Laurent Guerrier, Programmer with Clermont Ferrand International Short Film Festival, with Mick Hannigan, Director of the 53rd Corona Cork Film Festival.	Suzanne Keane of the Irish Film Board with Jane Lee, director of Revelations, at the Cork Film Festival promoting Irish Short Film reception at Clermont Ferrand.

Cork Film Festival’s purpose at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Market will be to:

1. Promote Irish short films of quality to the International short film community.

2. Promote a specially curated programme of 13 new Irish short films – a ‘Cork Film Festival Presents’ DVD - targeted at festival directors, programmers, agents and cultural agencies.

3. Create an Irish “shop-front” Market Stand, providing information, materials and DVD’s produced by Irish filmmakers, institutions, colleges and production houses.

4. To provide support at the Market for Irish organisations and Irish filmmakers attending the 2008 Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival.

For more information on the Clermont Ferrand International Short Film Festival and Short Film Market:
http://www.clermont-filmfest.com/