Marketing Malaysia’s creativity worldwide
Finas is offering for a record- breaking amount of local content at Mipcom.
MORE than 1,600 hours worth of Malaysian content will be offered to the world at the upcoming International Market of Communications Programmes ( Mipcom) event in Cannes, France to be held from today till Oct 8.
This is the highest ever amount of Malaysian content being offered at Mipcom, which is the largest, most anticipated global market for entertainment content across all platforms, including feature film, animation, TV series, documentary and more.
This year, the National Film Development Corporation of Malaysia ( Finas) has organised a Malaysian delegation comprising 25 established and new local companies, which will be led by Deputy Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Jailani Johari.
The local content on offer at Mipcom includes award- winning films such as Lelaki Harapan Dunia, Lagenda Budak Setan 3, and KL Gangster 2. According to its director of development and innovation Azmir Mutalib, Finas has been participating in the event for more than 10 years
now. “Every year, the goal is to achieve a certain export number. Last year, we managed to seal RM110mil worth of sales opportunities. This year, we hope to get more than that,” he said in a phone interview, adding that a majority of these deals involve providing services such as co- production, filming locations in Malaysia, and so on.
He added that animation production services are among the biggest contributors to export revenues. In the past decade, Malaysia’s animation industry has been growing steadily, and there have even been collaborations with international players like Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, Nickelodeon and TOMY, among others.
Local animated content such as Supap Strikas, , BoiBoy, Upinp & Ipin, Chuck Chicken and Rimba Racer have also been popular overseas.
This time around, Azmir says that Finas would like to focus on exploring opportunities in feature films and documen- taries. The fact that Pinewoods Iskandar Studios Malaysia attracted international quality productions – such as The Weinstein Co and Netflix series, Marco Polo and upcoming Hollywood film Lost In The Pacific – means that there is huge potential in that area.
“With Pinewood getting all these international projects, local production companies are getting international exposure as well, so hopefully we can leverage on that at Mipcom,” he said.
“Films like Lelaki Harapan Dunia, which we are sending to the Oscars for consideration, is proof that we can produce good quality content.”
Finas will also be introducing their brand- new one- stop creative hub called the Content Malaysia Pitching Centre at Mipcom.
The centre consolidates resources provided by government agencies to help ease industry players’ access to funding and commercialisation. The support and assistance include content development funding, production, co- production, pre- seed, VFX, commercialisation, R& D, tax breaks, cash rebates, marketing, promotion and more.
Jailani said in a press release: “It is important to focus efforts in creative content to explore markets beyond Malaysia as the creative industry is one of the driving forces of our economy.
“Hence, the Government is taking an initiative to embark on improving the creative industry’s development agencies with the introduction of Finas’ Content Malaysia Pitching Centre, a centralised agency to manage pitching for gov
ernment funds.”