Europa Cinemas to Celebrate 20 Years With 17th Conference in Paris

LONDON – Europa Cinemas, the international network of European cinemas to promote the continent's output, gathered Thursday in Paris for its 17th annual conference and to celebrate the organization's 20th anniversary.

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Organizers are also trumpeting its first ever conference specifically for sales agents to come up with strategies to push European movie distribution deals.

The 17th conference network in Paris runs November 22 through 25 with more than 700 professionals, exhibitors, distributors, producers and sales agents from all over Europe and from partner countries expected in the French capital.

Founded in 1992 with funding from the MEDIA program and from the France's Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC), Europa Cinemas is the first film theater network to focus on European films.

Its network of 2,943 screens in 1,111 theaters across 68 countries and 629 cities make Europa Cinemas a sizeable network and extends across Eastern European countries to the Balkans and Turkey.

Europa Cinemas also supports exhibition and distribution of European films across Asia, Latin America and the southern Mediterranean countries within the scope of Europa Cinemas Mundus.

Its objective is to provide "operational and financial support to cinemas that commit themselves to screen a significant number of European non-national films, to offer events and initiatives as well as promotional activities targeted at young audiences and to screen digital European non-national films."