Creating the New Normal on the Croisette
Decentralized Pictures Previews at the Cannes Film Festival’s Innovation Conference
By Leo Matchett
With this year’s Cannes Film Festival rolling out the red carpet after last year’s edition was put on hold, the global film industry found their way back to the French Riviera to celebrate the return of cinema. Gala premieres and standing ovations were back. But there was also a renewed sense of awareness around social impact and how the film industry can address the challenges of today.
The festival had vintage Renault 6 cars dropping off star actors at the red carpet, or in the case of Wes Anderson’s THE FRENCH DISPATCH, a gold-tinted party bus. A jury led by Spike Lee awarded the Palm d’Or to Julia Ducournau for her transgressive body horror shocker TITANE, the first time the award went to a female director. Welcome to the New Normal, as noted by Variety chief critic Peter DeBruge in his Cannes Wrap.
A New Breed of Filmmakers
This is exactly the kind of forward thinking that inspired us to start building Decentralized Pictures (DCP) in 2018. Opening doors for new talent is our mission as a non-profit. To be the keynote event of Le Marché du Film’s Cannes Next innovation conference [URL https://bit.ly/DCPatCannesNext) was a real honor, as decision makers came together to figure out how to improve the industry after a year and half of great hardship for everyone in the business, starting with locked-down filmmakers, their crews, to distributors, sales agents, festivals and theaters.
Cannes Next had extra relevance this year as it gave thousands of market and festival guests a glimpse of pioneers reshaping the industry with innovation. DCP co-founder Roman Coppola and I joined thought leaders from Samsung, Digital Domain, Microsoft and the European Union gathered to discuss the cross section of tech and creativity.
Watch the video here [https://vimeo.com/570967211] to see our current beta test with alumni of the School of Cinema at the University of Southern California (USC) and The Ghetto Film School. Dozens of film proposals are vying for positive reviews from the DCP community — each vote recorded by blockchain technology. Our co-founder Roman Coppola provided context on how DCP’s embrace of blockchain as a tool for fairness, transparency and efficiency evolved from his family’s long history of tech innovation, dating back to the invention of sound for film. Renowned futurist Sten-Kristan Saluveer moderated the conversation.
Access for All
As mentioned in our introductory Medium article, DCP is built to democratize film financing and development. Anyone can upload their project proposal — anyone can vote. Our platform community decides which projects are the most deserving of financing, support, and/or white glove mentoring throughout the life cycle of the film. Runners-up are rewarded with studio and agency introductions. The ethos of this decision-making process is to democratize support for the arts in a collaborative fashion.
Trip around the World
With Cannes being one of the world’s leading film industry events, it attracts filmmakers, producers, festival programmers and national organizations that support their country’s industry from around the globe. This year was a little different — with frequent COVID tests required for non EU visitors and partially restricted travel. But Cannes was packed with European decision makers looking for international coproductions or new films for their acquisitions pipeline, with Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America representing on the festival screens and in pavilions along the Croisette, Cannes’ fabled seaside boulevard.
Together with our co-founder Michael Musante (VP, Production & Acquisitions at American Zoetrope) and Paris-based board member and blockchain researcher Primavera De Filippi we went on a trip around the world meeting with industry leaders on this half mile of Riviera to start conversations about partnerships, grants and most importantly — how best to serve their underrepresented constituencies. Many follow-up meetings on video to follow — also with those unable to attend from other corners of the globe. Decentralized Pictures takes opening doors seriously. Follow us here on Medium for updates on our launch.
On the Horizon
In the next couple of weeks, we will be launching our Beta Net of our blockchain, the T4L3NT Network. We invite everyone to create an account and begin mining our native cryptocurrency, the FILMCredit. You can find out more here.
Following the successful launch of our Beta Net, we will be launching, later this year, the DCP main web application. Please stay tuned for updates and be sure to sign up and participate here when it launches.
