The big news circulating inside the SLS Hotel, which this year housed the L.A. Screenings Independents, was the sudden departure of Darío Turovelzky as CEO of Telefe, which he helped make into Argentina’s most popular broadcast TV network. Telefe was acquired in October by the local media holding company Gropo TV Litoral from Paramount Skydance.
When asked about the new venue, the SLS Hotel (a favorite of Portugal football/soccer ace Cristiano Ronaldo), which replaced last year’s Roosevelt Hotel (which, in turn, superseded the Fairmont Century Plaza), the general opinion was favorable. However, before committing to another year, L.A. Screenings organizers sent out a survey among participants to solicit their opinions.
In terms of exhibitors — split between hotel suites and meeting tables — the number listed on the board by the elevators remained the same as last year at 55, however, according to official figures, the total number of companies was 107, including those firms that replaced companies that canceled at the last minute (such as Ledafilms), and those who attended without registering or exhibiting. The exhibitors listed on the board came from 12 countries, in addition to the U.S. Also significant was the Latin trade media presence, together with a large group of U.S. public relations agents.
As for the number of TV content buyers, it has been reported that the L.A. Screenings will attract over 700 of them to the Hollywood studios. Many — an estimated 180 (mostly from LatAm, with a few from Hispanic Canada and the U.S.) — were at the SLS Hotel for the indie segment, which started briskly on Thursday, May 14, and ran until the second and final day, Friday, May 15.
Even though the L.A. Screenings independents market ended on May 15, Argentina’s Telefilms held down the indies’ “fort” with its own screenings and party on the following day, held at the same time that the major U.S. studios scheduled their own screenings and parties (full report in VideoAge‘s Water Cooler on Thursday, May 21).
Returning to ex-Telefe bigwig Turovelzky, an unconfirmed rumor circulating at the L.A. Screenings Independents was that he had initially allied himself with his former boss, Gustavo Yankelevich, who also bid to buy Telefe from Paramount but lost to the current owners.
Pictured above, from top l.: MediaHub’s Elif Turna; Calinos Entertainment’s Firat Gulgen and Insurgence’s Niccoló Messina; Inter Medya’s Sinem Aliskan and Beatriz Cea Okan; GRB Entertainment’s Liz Levenson and Gary Benz; Jorge Balleste of Future Today; Kanal D International’s Duda Perman; Hemisphere Media Group’s Jimmy Artega and Alejandro Leda of Runtime Media; Sheila Morris of Morris PR and VideoAge‘s Dom Serafini.
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