Sydney Levine’s IndieWire blog, Sydney’s Buzz, focuses on international film industry developments and analysis of the international film market related to buyers, sales agents, filmmakers, film festivals and distribution.
Levine has over 35 years experience in the entertainment industry. Before inventing FilmFinders in 1988, she served as Vice President of Acquisitions for Republic Pictures and previously spent three years of acquiring feature films for Lorimar. Levine’s international contacts have resulted in acquisitions ranging from specialized foreign features, such as “My Beautiful Laundrette”, “Letter to Brezhnev” and “Tampopo”, as well as a wide variety of artistic and commercial genres. She has also worked in international distribution for Twentieth Century Fox in Amsterdam and in marketing for ABC Video Enterprises. In 1988 she founded FilmFinders with her partner Peter Belsito to act as a back office for acquisitions executives in both distribution and sales, as well as to serve festival programmers needing to track new films worldwide for acquisition, to consult with producers needing to plan festival and sales, and to aid financing strategies.
In 2006 she sold the company to Withoutabox and together they were acquired by IMDb in 2008, where she integrated FilmFinders into IMDbPro.