PARIS: Malavida was founded in 2004 by current managers Anne-Laure Brénéol (acquisitions/theatrical) and Lionel Ithurralde (administration/DVD). It began primarily as a DVD publisher and DVD distributor, and since 2010, has increasingly focused on theatrical releases. It currently has a collection of 170 films collection that has been built up at the pace of 15 titles per year.
Brénéol began as a film director of short films and feature documentaries, complemented by work with theatrical and DVD distribution companies. Ithurralde has worked primarily for DVD publishers, and created France’s first independent DVD collection at the start of the Gallic home video market.
Since 2010, they have increasingly focused on theatrical releases of their classic titles in France, which they consider to be a tough market due to high P&A costs and the narrow window available for Eastern and Northern European titles.
One of their main 2015 releases is Bo Widerberg’s “Joe Hill” that screened this year at Cannes, in the Cinema de la Plage sidebar, and is now screening at this week’s Lumière Film Festival in Lyon. They have also diversified into television programming, including classic Czech children’s series “Ferda the Ant” by Hermina Tyrlova. Their upcoming titles include Gallic releases of films by the late Derek Jarman.
While at the Lumière Fest, they answered an in-depth Q&A about how they view the classic film business.
How did you decide to focus on classic films, and why Eastern Europe and Northern Europe?
We discovered in 2005 that many of the classic Polish titles from the 1960s that we loved (such as the Polish film “The Saragossa Manuscript”) had never been exhibited in France. We therefore started a collection of Polish films that turned out to be a major audience and critical success in France. We then did the same with 1960s New Wave films from Czechoslovakia, by directors such as Menzel, Forman, Chytilova, which was also a big hit. Then we extended to New Wave films from throughout Europe, with many incredible and unique gems, in terms of images and scripts, that were relatively unknown in France.
