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Join this lab to meet international practitioners from across the film value chain, share field experiences, renew perspectives and find possible ideas and solutions for launching new initiatives or adapting activities.

Led by Tom de Bont (Executive Director and Special Programmer, HEERENSTRAAT THEATER, Wageningen, The Netherlands) together with Ola Starmach (Event Programmer and Communication officer, KINO POD BARANAMI, Krakow, Poland), the Sofia Lab will be a great opportunity to share approaches and find practical solutions to some of the big questions facing the film sector such as:

How to identify skills and strengths of your cinema and staff? How to upskill our staff? How do we attract young audiences through social media and targeted marketing campaigns? Ticketing, membership and pricing: what new marketing strategy could we implement? With rising concerns about our environment issues, are there more sustainable solutions for our theatres? How to develop an innovative and collective project? Where to find ideas and inspiration?

Topics include: 

• Marketing and communication: strategies for reaching out towards audiences.
• Building partnerships with cinemas and third parties.
• Improving skills through training and exchanges of best practice.
• Bridging European film to local communities for social impact and audience building.
• Curatorship and discovery: Event management and looking beyond programming.
• Changing our mind-set and welcome change.
• Enhancing the cinema experience: rethinking the theatre environment and services.

Bring your ideas and issues to the Lab, step back from the day to day and spend time with practitioners from a diverse range of national contexts to reflect on your practice, exchange expertise and find practical answers.

Open Slot sessions also give participants the space to share a problem, pitch innovative ideas and/or identifying potential international collaborators for new projects.

IMPORTANT: This lab is open to all European exhibitors, members of Europa Cinemas network or not. The number of participants is limited to 35 people. Applications will be considered in the order they are received. However, priority will be given to exhibitors who never attended a Europa Cinemas Lab before and to exhibitors from Central and Eastern Europe and Balkan countries.

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PROGRAMME

Have a look at the following documents: the Sofia Lab programme and the list of participants.

LIVE STREAMING ON YOUTUBE

Follow live the Sofia Lab! In order to satisfy the great interest in the Sofia Lab and allow all the European exhibitors and professionals not present in Sofia to follow the main sessions and the case studies, we are proposing a live-stream of the Sofia lab during the 3 main days of the event. For more information and the detailed timeschedule, have a look at the article written specifially for the Live Streaming of our Sofia Lab.

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MOBILE APP 

Our Europa Cinemas App gives you access to the Sofia Lab programme, the participants’ presentation and additional information on each speaker of each session.

You can download the Europa Cinemas App via the following links:

Apple: http://apple.co/3i9rgxZ

Androïd: http://bit.ly/3EZB9Hl

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For more information on the seminar, do not hesitate to contact:

Bianca Popistas, Project Coordinator - Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden

Tel. +33 1 42 71 12 42, e-mail: bpopistas@europa-cinemas.org

Alexandre Tchernookov, Project Coordinator - Central and Eastern Europe

Tel. +33 1 42 71 83 62, e-mail: atchernookov@europa-cinemas.org

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