IWC helps put emerging filmmakers on the map.
Any watchmaker knows it’s all about process. The artistry lies in the details, the new and ingenious ways horologists find to assemble a piece’s tiny moving parts. In this sense, watchmaking has a great deal in common with another time-based medium: filmmaking. But the two creative industries have a host of major differences, and survival rate might be chief among them. Getting your first big break in watchmaking can be daunting, but once you’ve reached a competent level of training, you have a solid future ahead, says Georges Kern, CEO of IWC. “We train young people in our watchmaking school, and these people stay with us,” he explains. “I’m convinced that we can give them a lifetime job. I’m not worried for their future.” But when IWC became involved with the filmmaking industry, Kern immediately noticed that, compared to the watchmakers he was mentoring, young filmmakers have a much more arduous road to success. “It is very, very difficult for young filmmakers to emerge,” Kern states.
So when the company first partnered with the Tribeca Film Festival four years ago to offer the IWC Filmmaker Award, it was important to the brand that the prize be given for process as much as product. The annual $50,000 award is given to a promising feature film primarily to help its creator finance the costly and time-consuming work of post-production. IWC donates another $50,000 directly to the Tribeca Film Institute, the Festival’s offshoot nonprofit that supports moviemakers through grants and professional development.
Says this year’s award winner Matt Ruskin, “It is such a difficult process to make a film that to receive the support and recognition of the IWC Filmmaker award really means so much.” The award also offers recognition in the industry, which is a vital part of any film’s future success, as Georges Kern knows. “The movie has a prize even before it’s finished, and with that prize and recognition, the producer or director or screenwriter can raise some money in a much easier way than before.”
IWC’s connection with the filmmaking industry developed organically, not through a grand plan. “When I started to work with IWC, we had some Hollywood stars wearing our products,” says Kern. “Then one day we had the opportunity to [work] with a festival.” Kern emphasizes the emotional connection between the two crafts:” Watchmaking is also about creating emotion through storytelling … Hollywood is a dream factory; there is nothing more meaningful than to be associated with Hollywood.”
Tribeca is only one of five film festivals with which IWC partners; the others are Zurich, Beijing, London, and Dubai. In each country, the company (which is intimately involved in the adjudication process for its award-winners) looks for innovative production techniques, a strong cinematic voice, and an element of social importance. For Kern, Matt Ruskin’s film Untitled Colin Warner Project synthesized all these elements perfectly. “It was a clear no-brainer, the winner this year,” said Kern. “The actors are great, the story is interesting … it shows courage, commitment, love.” Ruskin’s film is a narrative version of the true story of Colin Warner, a man wrongly convicted of murder whose best friend spent 20 years trying to secure his release. As the LA-based writer/director put it, “I heard Colin Warner’s story on the radio and I could not get it out of my head … for me it is very important to be passionate about the story we are trying to tell.” In fact, most festival films around the world “have social themes, social problems” at the heart of their stories, says Kern, though there are “totally different approaches by the filmmakers depending on their cultural context.” It’s this kind of cultural exchange that makes film festivals so invaluable. As Kern puts it,” When these movies can travel around the world and be shown in other festivals, [they can] tell a specific story on a specific social issue of a specific region.”
Ruskin’s specificity and social message earned him more than his IWC Filmmaker award. On the evening of the fourth annual “For the Love of Cinema” gala dinner, the filmmaker was feted in the company of some of the industry’s most revered luminaries, including Robert de Niro, co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival. Comedian Joel McHale hosted the star-studded crowd, which included Tribeca Film Festival directors Katie Holmes and Kate Mara, as well as jurors Jennifer Westfeldt, Jason Biggs, Judy Greer, and Hill Harper. Also in attendance were IWC brand ambassadors Dev Patel and Scott Eastwood. After IWC CMO Franziska Gsell presented Ruskin with his award, a musical performance by Johnnyswim concluded the evening.
For its part, IWC has chosen to tell the story of this four-year partnership with Tribeca through a limited-edition Portugieser Annual Calendar watch dedicated to the festival. Limited to just 50individually numbered pieces, the Annual Calendar Tribeca FIlm Festival 2016 features a slate gray dial that is a nod to the streets of New York, with its burgundy red subdials representing a movie premiere’s red carpet. The watch’s transparent sapphire crystal caseback allows a view of the oscillating weight engraved with the Tribeca Film Festival logo. The timepiece features the in-house Caliber 52850 automatic-winding movement, with day, date, and month displays. Housed in a stainless-steel case, the watch offers seven days of power reserve when fully wound. It’s available only in IWC’s boutiques in the United States, where a portion of every sale will go to benefit the Tribeca Film Festival. “What we try to offer with Tribeca is to open doors. Fundamentally we help raise more money … that’s the objective,” says Kern.
“We try to support younger people who have projects that would otherwise have less opportunity to be made—that’s our role. We are not here to support Hollywood; they know how to fund their own movies.” Indeed.