SEAFIC aims to advance, strengthen, and refine the quality of feature-length scripts and projects by talented filmmakers from the Southeast Asian region. SEAFIC Seed Lab expands on this mission by aiding shorts filmmakers in exploring their directorial voices prior to developing their first feature scripts.
SEAFIC Seed Lab is a brand new lab concept which can be considered a precursor to the SEAFIC Script Lab proper. We seek to identify up to five promising Southeast Asian short film directors who have not yet started writing their feature film projects – basically, only those within the exploration phase of their first feature are eligible to apply.
These selected filmmakers shall then attend 2 lab sessions within 3 months, during which they will have a chance to work with our experts to explore their directorial voices as well as develop their ideas into potential synopses and directors’ statements for their first features. Once they have completed Seed Lab, we hope that they will then be ready to not only apply to subsequent SEAFIC Script Labs, but also any other international script labs around the world.
Combining forces to create a comprehensive film lab for directors, screenwriters and producers in Southeast Asia, the Southeast Asia Fiction Film Lab (SEAFIC) and Nantes Festival des 3 Continents’ Produire au Sud (France) are maintaining their collaboration which merges SEAFIC’s 9-month intensive script development program with Produire au Sud’s long-running producers’ workshop in Bangkok under one roof.
Called SEAFICxPAS, this new arrangement shall consolidate both program’s calls for entries. The five projects eventually selected for SEAFIC shall automatically be enrolled in Produire au Sud’s Southeast Asia workshop: the directors and screenwriter shall attend SEAFIC’s script development lab, while in parallel the producers of those same projects shall attend Produire au Sud. SEAFIC is a pioneering script lab created for Southeast Asian filmmakers in order to strengthen the quality of feature-length fiction films from the region. Each year SEAFIC invites 1st, 2nd and 3rd-time filmmakers to work with a script consultant and international experts for 9 months to develop their projects.
Previously held yearly in Bangkok in November, Produire au Sud’s Southeast Asia lab shall now move to Chiang Mai and shall take place concurrently with SEAFIC’s first session, March 10-15, 2020. Furthermore, SEAFICxPAS shall hold a second follow-up session for these same producers in October 2020 to coincide with SEAFIC’s final session in Manila (Philippines).
SEAFICxPAS is supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The deal was negotiated by Produire au Sud’s Coordinator Guillaume Mainguet and SEAFIC’s Executive Director Raymond Phathanavirangoon, with the help of Frédéric Alliod, Regional audiovisual attaché for South East Asia at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Furthermore, both the Japan Foundation and the Embassy of the United States of America in Thailand have come aboard SEAFIC as sponsors, joining the Singapore Film Commission and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in their support of the script lab.
Singapore’s The Arts House, which occupies the almost 200-year-old building that was Singapore’s first Parliament House and now promotes and presents multidisciplinary programmes and festivals such as literary arts, film, performing and visual arts, has also come on board as SEAFIC’s partner and venue sponsor for SEAFIC’s final session in November 2020. The Chiang Mai sessions shall be held at Monoceros Resort in Maerim, Chiang Mai.
SEAFICxPAS Workshop was a 4 days local training workshop devoted to emerging producers and directors from the ASEAN countries : Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The aim of the workshop is to familiarize young professionals with a variety of important tools and international coproduction techniques by coaching individual projects in development.
SEED LABxPAS 2021 | 5th EditionSEAFICxPAS 2020 | 4th editionSEAFICxPAS 2019 | 3rd editionSEAFICxPAS 2018 | 2nd editionSEAFICxPAS 2016/2017 | 1st edition
