He Delivers the BIFAN’s Challenge for 2 Years during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Shin Chul, the Chairperson of the Organizing Committee of the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN), will be the speaker at the ‘Festival Hub Conference’ at the 75th Cannes Film Festival Film Market. The theme of this year is ‘The New Era of Festivals: Expanding Beyond Hybrid,’ and Shin will share insights into the year-round activities of film festivals whose necessity came to the fore during the Pandemic period. For the conference, 4 world festival officials, who have already been performing year-round activities actively for years, will participate as presenters. Chairperson Shin Chul will share the challenges they had for 2 years during the Pandemic to hold BIFAN, the biggest genre film festival in Asia, with the world-renowned film festivals, and create a foothold for network construction and collaboration. 

Chairperson Shin will also talk about changes in the media environment, changes in film languages, and changes in film festivals according to the changes in the screening environment in the COVID-19 Pandemic era. It is expected that BIFAN will give deeper insights to the field officials based on actual programs and experiences to redefine the missions of film festivals, such as the active introduction of VR (virtual reality) and XR (extended reality) and ‘Ghost Story Campus,’ a project launched by BIFAN to discover source stories and creators. 

‘Festival Hub Conference’ is a program of the Cannes International Film Festival Film Market launched last year to create new synergy among film festivals around the world. Planned by more than a dozen film festival programmers and directors, the program forms a community for the film festivals around the world, and it is also a venue to expand the network and promote film festivals. 

In addition to Chairperson Shin Chul, Jabbar Patel, the Chairperson of India’s Pune International Film Festival Organizing Committee, Hugo Rosák, the Head of Industry Office at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, and Tegan Vevers, the Program Manager at the British Film Institute, will participate as the presenters in the conference.