Rome mart confirms expansion

ROME -- The Rome Film Festival Business Street mart wrapped Sunday, trumpeting its future expansion into the Eternal City's Maxxi art museum and announcing winners of its New Cinema Network co-production component, as some deals surfaced. Its now official that starting in 2012 Rome's informal mart will use the city's new contempo art center, designed by star architect Zaha Hadid, for screenings, meetings and confabs, alongside its current Via Veneto locations. The Rome mart's dazzling new digs are 500 yards from the fest's main hub, the Renzo Piano-designed Auditorium, in Rome's Flaminio hood. Riccardo Tozzi, prexy of Italy's motion picture association, ANICA, hailed the move as "great news that will make both the festival and the market shift gears," during a presser inside the museum with Rome mayor Gianni Alemanno in attendance. The five-day largely Euro-centric mart this year was attended by 280 buyers and 93 sales companies with 116 titles unspooling, 32 of which were market premieres. First deals to trickle through are buzzed black comedy "Hotel Lux," by Leander Haussmann, sold by Bavaria Film to Italy's Archibald, and "Noordzee Texas," by Belgium's Bavo Duferne, picked up by Italo specialty label Atlantide from Wavelength Pictures. Meanwhile, NCN announced its winning co-production projects with "Off Frame," a docu by Mohanad Yaqubi about the Palestinian Film Unit, which produced pics championing the Palestinian cause in the 1970s, taking the Eurimages Co-production Development Award, worth Euros 30,000 ($41,000). The NCN Focus Europe Award went to "Human Song" by Belgian helmers Benedicte Lienard and Mary Jimenez. Lienard's well-received first work, "A Piece of Sky," unspooled in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. Contact Nick Vivarelli at nvivarelli@gmail.com