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Europe's Finest takes over film package from Celluloid Dreams for digital distribution

As of now the Cologne digital cinema distribution platform Europe's Finest is offering nine festival successes from the current slate of Celluloid Dreams in DCI-conform standard for direct booking for European digital cinemas. Among them are films such as BETTER THINGS, DEAD IN 3 DAYS, KILL DADDY GOODNIGHT, LET'S MAKE MONEY, WEDDING DIRECTOR, WHEN A MAN COMES HOME, and WHITE NIGHT WEDDING. All films were shown, among others, at the film festivals in Cannes and Berlin. The complete package and the available territories can be found at http://www.finest-film.com/.

"Our goal is to give our quality cinema an audience as large as possible and generate revenues for our rights owners. Through Europe's Finest we want to make it possible for our films to be shown in countries where, until now, we could not find any local distributor," says Hengameh Panahi, President of Celluloid Dreams. "Together with The Auteurs and in collaboration with The Criterion Collection we have set up the first global online VOD platform and have built a community of cinema lovers.

Digital cinematic distribution through Europe's Finest is a good example of our strategy for the new digital means of distribution."

"We are delighted that, with Celluloid Dreams, we have managed to win over one of the most important players in the world sales field with our concept. As a service provider for world sales, archives, and other rights owners we want to give films a second chance in European cinemas

- independent of rental cycles and with flexibly addable subtitles.

Besides our selection of film classics, we are currently setting up a second category specially aimed at young arthouse audiences," explains Tilman Scheel, CEO of Europe's Finest.

TOMMY is the 50th classic film in the catalogue of Europe's Finest

"Tommy, Can You Hear Me?" - is the question asked by The Who in their groundbreaking rock opera TOMMY, congenially turned into a film by Ken Russell in 1975, featuring stars such as Tina Turner, Elton John, Jack Nicholson, and Eric Clapton. Europe's Finest has now included TOMMY as its 50th film in their collection of important European classics. Thus the "garish picture sheet" (Encyclopaedia of International Film) appears once more refreshed by the 2K scan from the original negative, DCI conform for the use in digital cinemas. Almost more importantly - the rather aged sound from 1975 was digitally remastered for today's

cinemas: "Pinball Wizard", "See Me, Feel Me, Listening to you" in unheard of quality - Tommy, we can hear you!!!

The film is available for the following territories: Austria, Norway, Finland, The Netherlands, Switzerland F, Switzerland G, Switzerland I, Luxembourg F, Luxembourg FL, Luxembourg G, Sweden, Iceland, Belgium F, Belgium FL, Germany, Denmark, Spain.

Europe's Finest in Mantua at the INCONTRI DEL CINEMA D'ESSAI of the FICE

An ailing economy, changes to peoples' leisure time activities, way too many film releases, more and more illegally downloaded films -- the cinema business is unsettled and is facing big challenges everywhere in Europe. Considering this the 9th meeting of the industry at INCONTRI DEL CINEMA D'ESSAI held by the FICE (Federazione Italiana Cinema d'Essai) in Mantua, Italy, certainly was not a place for great optimism -

nonetheless: Tilman Scheel, CEO of Europe's Finest brought a bit of silver lining to this cloud.

In his keynote he featured, among other things, the chances that digital cinema offers to cinema operators who want to show film classics. " A digital file, especially when it comes to classic films, offers a great advantage. Archives will not release these films anymore as there are only one or two copies of each film left and they are too worried that those will get worn out," says Scheel. Classics aside, a second segment could be interesting to the cinemas: "Only a fraction of the big festival successes gets to the screens abroad. As a cinema operator you have almost no chance of laying your hands on those films. The main problems are language, negotiations of the hire conditions, but also the cost-benefit factor: Most of the time it is simply not worth booking films from abroad for only one to three screenings. For this reason, Europe's Finest has been sourcing European films which were successful at festivals and could therefore be interesting for other countries. For those films we will undertake the clarification of rights and the digitalisation."

Europe's Finest

Europe's Finest - the first Digital Cinema Distribution Platform - supplies films in 2K resolution inclusive of performance rights for digital cinemas. Subtitles as well as marketing materials are offered according to the territory and allow for a flexible programming of the cinemas according to their target audience.

Rights owners will also benefit from the service: With the help of Europe's Finest their films can be shown in the cinemas in territories where, until then, they had no distributors. Film classics on the other hand will be given a new lease of life through digital distribution:

With films ranging from Hitchcock and Kaurismäki all the way to Truffaut, the constantly expanding catalogue of Europe's Finest covers a broad spectrum of European film art.

Festival presences of Europe's Finest this year:

BFI 53rd London Film Festival (14-29 October) SoundTrack_Cologne (19-22 November) Festival of French Film, Prague (20-26 November) Ventana Sur, Buenos Aires (27-30 November)

http://www.finest-film.com/