• A total of thirteen productions from ten different countries will compete in the Official Selection the days 23th and 24th of june at Octubre Centre de Cultura Contemporània
  
• ·Representatives from some of the most important festivals and digital platforms will form the jury and will offer talks for creators

“This edition we have a very powerful section, full of series that are not available on line nowadays, cause most of them have been created at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018”, declared Maria Albiñana, coordinator for the Webseries Selection for the 33 edition of the International València Festival- Cinema Jove. As a test, a button: the digital platform for RTVE, PLAYZ, will premiere in the contest “Limbo” a spanish-argentinian coproduction starring Ingrid García-Jonsson. The show, out of contest, will be screened exclusively at Cinema Jove the 23th of June, with the assistance of Alberto Fernández, director of PLAYZ platform, who will also participate in a round table for professionals.

In the third edition of the Official Selection of Webseries will participate thirteen productions from countries like Spain, Argentina, United Kingdom, Turkey, France, Uruguay and Chile amongst others. Titles like “Nemausus”, a french sci-fi show exclusively premiered, “Recursos Humanos”, from Chile, which director Cristobal Ross sold his first webseries fo Netflix; “Dorien” is the spanish one, directed by the Prada brothers and starring Carolina Bang, Dani Muriel and Macarena Gómez; or the australian “This Is Desmondo Ray”, webseries that unites drama and animation. Those are part of the participants in the Official Selection.

“Cinema Jove gets a feel for the best webseries in the international field, and also intends to keep doing it every year”, assures Carlos Madrid, director of Cinema Jove. Besides of the contestant titles, the 24th of June will be screened the best digital series from 2017, “High Life”, according to the Web Series World Cup. Luke Eve, its director, will attend the act and talk to the press and public about his personal story and the main topic of the series: mental illnesses. The Valencian Asistential Foundation MAIDES, dedicated to the caring of the mentally ill without resources, will attend also to share their impressions with the australian director.

About webseries rise, Cinema Jove’s director, Carlos Madrid, assures that the festival will maintain its support “for a expanding format, which impact a large audience and which has many young directors”. In this idea, section’s coordinator, María Albiñana, explains webseries “had started with low budgets” and were considered as “low-qual series”. “This trend is now inverses, webseries became more and more important and they are now the material raw in which digitals platforms as Netflix, HBO or RTVE draw”. The fact those platforms has created specific categories for this type of format is, thus Carlos Madrid, “a sign that webseries came to stay”.

The thirteen Official Selection’s productions roductions de la Sélection Officielle will compete for the prize Moon of Valencia of the Best Webseries which grants two thousands euros and for the Public Prize which grants eight hundred euros. This Cinema Jove’s edition take also in count creators with Marseille WebFest Special Prize for which the director of the European most important festival will choose a webserie among Official Selection to include it into Marseille festival’s next edition selection. Also, the distribution prize Rockzeline, consisting in a contract with the winner.

María Albiñana signals that digital platforms see in webseries “an opportunity to reach all spectators who like to consume new stories, new narrative forms freer”. Concerning the festival’s selection, organized by Institut Valencia de Cultura, the coordinator affirms they are “stories we are not accustomed to watch on TV” and there is no doubt the spectator will want more”.

Luxe jury and lectures  

Jean-Michel Albert, founder and director of the Marseille Webfest, the most prestigious digital series festival in Europe, is one of five members of the jury this year, which is a real luxury for professionals in the sector, some of which The rest of the jury is composed of the director and producer Granadina Chus Gutiérrez, who has over a dozen films to his credit, Young Man Kang, who founded and directs SeoulFest, the only one digital series festival in Asia, Lance Sloane who is vice president of the digital department of Warner Bros., Blue Ribbon Content and Jöel Bassaget, founder of the World Series of Web Series Festivals, Web Series World Cup, which each year presents the “World Cup” to the best production of this format.

This year’s selection also includes round tables and “informative capsules”, half-hour seminars where specialists offer technical information to professionals. Man Kang will immerse us in the analysis of the “big Asian market” and the keys to access it so much to sell web-series as to produce them. Another of these capsules will be in the hands of the present directors of Warner Bros. and RTVE, Lance Sloane and Alberto Fernández, who will explain to the creators how to access their respective platforms, Blue Ribbon Content and PLAYZ. For its part, the round table “Valencia supports web-series” will bring together the representatives of the Valencia Institute of Culture, A Punt and the Valencia Film Office to explain the advantages and facilities of turning a digital series in the Comunidad Valenciana .