PARIS, FRANCE – March 07, 2016 – Given the tremendous growth and success these past six years, Ms. Laurence Herszberg, general director of Forum des Images and founder of Series Mania, announced today that the Series Mania Festival has unveiled a brand new competition for world and international premieres at this year’s edition which will take place in Paris from April 15 -24. Series Mania programmers will select eight recently finished TV series from eight different territories around the globe. An international jury made up of five renowned names involved in series, cinema, and culture will judge these TV series and present the winner with the Best Series Award.
In addition to unveiling the new competition, Ms. Herszberg proudly announced that seven-time Emmy winner David Chase (The Sopranos, I’ll Fly Away, Northern Exposure, The Rockford Files) has been selected to serve as president of this year’s jury. The four additional jury members will be announced shortly.
“We could not be more thrilled than to have David Chase, the absolute godfather of television series, presiding over our first ever international jury,” commented Ms. Herszberg. “David has served as a mentor to many of today’s most influential showrunners like Terence Winter and Matthew Weiner and he is the perfect leader to serve as president for our jury.”
Added Ms. Herszberg, “TV series have now arrived at such a level of quality and expectation that they merit the same attention at international festivals as given to the cinema for so many years and Series Mania is the ideal platform for this new competition.”
David Chase has produced, written, and directed critically acclaimed television shows such as I’ll Fly Away and the influential Peabody Award-winning HBO drama series The Sopranos. TheSopranos, which he created, is one of the greatest television series of all time. The show, which premiered January 10, 1999, won a multitude of awards, including 21 Emmys and five Golden Globes among them.
Chase began writing for network television and eventually became a writer and producer on the classic NBC show The Rockford Files. In 1978, he won his first Emmy when the show was named Outstanding Dramatic Series. In 1980, Chase earned his second Emmy, this time for Outstanding Writing in a Movie for Television, the acclaimed Off the Minnesota Strip. He also received the Writers Guild of America Award for that film. Chase has gone on to receive a total of seven Emmy Awards.
ABOUT SERIES MANIA
Organized since 2010 by the Forum des Images, the Series Mania Festival brings the best international TV series on the big screen and offers its audience (almost 22,000 spectators in 2015 with 980 industry professionals) the unique opportunity to meet and debate with renowned show-runners, directors and television talent. Series Mania has developed into a unique event with wide recognition, entirely dedicated TV series, and aimed at both the general public and industry professionals. For this seventh edition, the festival is organizing a competition featuring world premieres judged by a prestigious international jury. The event will also reach out beyond its home in the Forum des Images to host screenings in some of Paris’s great movie venues such as the Grand Rex and the UGC Ciné-Cité Les Halles.
Online registration for Series Mania is available at http://series-mania.fr/en
